Orbit
by Idream3223
Summary: Eric told Sookie he owned her because he owned her house. He told her that she was two Sookie's, human Sookie and something more. Fueled by anger and desire she enters his house and tells him that he is hers and dares him to vampire up and explore how high they can go together.
1. Orbit

_A/N This one goes out to VictoryinTrouble. Her naughty provocative one shots combined with this stellar fan art on YouTube were the inspiration. Thank you, Cantrous for the awesome video inspiration._

True Blood/Season 4 Episode 2/One Shot/E&amp;S/OOC/NC-17

**Orbit**

He came to my house uninvited and told me I was his.

He said that he owned me because he owned my house.

I entered his with the same attitude.

He was on his throne when I walked in and passed Pam at the door without a word, headed for him. Sometimes a girl just had to strap a rocket to her ass and go for a ride.

**_Attitude_** by_ Hardknox _was vibrating the walls and when I stopped in front of his throne in my short frilly red dress and three inch heels I waited until I was sure I had his attention. His face never changed but his eyes told me everything I needed to know.

I turned my back to him and bent over, wrapping my hands around my ankles and holding there bouncing slightly in time with the music for three beats before sliding my hands slowly up, letting them disappear under my dress, pulling it up just far enough to let him see the red lace boy shorts I had on underneath before letting it fall back down.

I heard fangs snick down all around me as I continued to caress my body on the outside of my dress all the way up to my breasts, which I cupped provocatively, letting him only see the suggestion of what I was doing before I crossed my arms in front of myself and turned to face him as my hips started to move.

I closed my eyes and brought my hands up to run through my long hair while I moved my hips like I would if I was riding him, and I wanted to be riding him. He said I was his. He said he owned me. Well, if you're going to own something you shouldn't be afraid to put it on the road.

He said he liked fairy Sookie. It was an invitation for her to come out and play.

_Yeah, I had an attitude, I had an attitude_

Opening my eyes I dropped to the floor, legs spread wide, palms flat on the floor as I bounced my hips. I locked eyes with him and licked my lips.

I saw his fangs come down, but the music drowned out the sound. I stood and held out my hand to him, daring him to join me. He rose slowly from his seat and then he was before me, arms around me, his leg between mine where I most wanted him to be. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but if that was what he was offering I would take it, before I took the rest of him.

Resting my body against his leg I started to grind, my eyes locked with his as I let him provide the friction I needed. I could feel his pants getting wet from my desire and when it registered with him exactly what was happening I saw his pupils dilate to near total black. I could feel the vibrations in his chest against mine as I pressed harder and rolled my head back counting on him to hold me.

His hand slid up to the back of my neck, holding me firmly, gently, safely as I pressed harder into his leg to achieve take off. He folded his long supernatural body over mine in a form that no human male could manage, and I thought that I felt him leave the floor entirely as he wrapped himself around me like a giant snake.

I felt his cool lips on my neck, and then long slow licks of his cool tongue that stoked the fire between my legs. He pressed me into his leg, daring me to come in his arms.

_Yeah I had an attitude, I had an attitude and animals in my brain._

He pressed me down on his leg, tensing his giant thigh muscles, making them hard for my pleasure and it felt oh so good. At the same time he nipped my neck not breaking the skin and I came in his arms, screaming his name only to have it swallowed by his soul possessing kiss.

_And we have ignition…_

I pulled his ear to my lips and worked for lift off.

"I am two Sookie Stackhouse's. I am human and I am more than human. Who are you?" I followed that by tugging on his earlobe with my teeth. I felt the vibrations in his chest again.

"Who do you want me to be Miss Stackhouse?" He growled into my ear, still wrapped around and through me, a foot off the floor in the middle of his bar.

"The man who is fucking me against the wall in the next three seconds," I purred in his ear. The bar was a blur when we left but the music followed us through the walls and filling my brain and body with the attitude I needed to achieve orbit.

_Truth for the last time…We'll just come back to blow your mind, that chick is gonna blow your mind_

I felt the wall against my back and the cold Viking between my thighs a moment later. My underwear torn away and he pinned me there with his hard shaft, pulling my legs up around him, I locked them above his hips and took his mouth again.

When the kiss ended I told him, "Betcha I can blow your mind before you blow mine, Eric." He groaned and pushed deeper into me. He felt so good the only way I could even begin to make good on that threat was to focus on bringing him as much pleasure as I could. Using all the tricks I had picked up from eavesdropping in on other people's sex lives I clenched down on him making him scream as his hands left my body and went flat on the wall on either side of my head, pushing into the plaster, leaving Viking sized hand prints as he sped up.

I grabbed his nipple between my fingers and twisted hard and down before releasing him and taking his mouth again. His fangs were down so I slashed my tongue on them and kissed him for all I was worth, delighted to feel him shudder in me, around me.

He was mine.

I ran my fingers through his hair, mussing it, delighted to see him throw his head back following my touch. Then I pulled him down to my neck while I buried my face in his and bit, not enough to break the skin but enough to let him know what I wanted him to do. He shuddered again, moaning and I felt his fangs slide into my neck as he exploded inside me. I screamed my victory and came around him hard and intense, intoxicated on conquering this impossible man before me.

A moment later I felt him lick the wounds on my neck and pull back to heal them. "No," I said pulling his head up to look into his eyes. "Leave them. I want to remember this." There were a million things in his eyes as he looked at me, pulling out slowly and letting me slide down the wall until I was on my feet before him.

I straightened my dress and pushed off the wall, pushing against his chest with the palm of my hand. I looked him over from head to toe, noting the jeans and underwear down around his knees, the just fucked swollen lips on his face and his tousled hair.

This Viking had been thoroughly pillaged.

I took a step around him and headed for the door. Halfway there I turned back and found him watching me intently. "I thought it over," I said.

"And?" his voice was a gravel pit of sex.

"I decided sometimes a girl's gotta strap a rocket to her ass and see if she can achieve orbit." I walked out then, leaving him to think it over for a change.


	2. Pillaged

**Orbit/Pillaged**

EPOV

When the door to my office closed I fell back against the now damaged wall of my office.

"What the fuck just happened?" I asked the now empty room. I usually didn't talk out loud.

"You just got your brains fucked out," Pam answered cheerfully from the door. And that would be why I don't to myself out loud. Sighing, I pushed off the wall as Sookie had just done and with as much dignity as I could muster, pulled up my pants. She stood there, had on her hip, smirk on her lips and waited for me to say something.

I had nothing to say to her, but fuck if I didn't have plenty to say to the tiny red hurricane that had just flounced out of here.

"Is she gone?" I barked out?

"Without so much as a howdy do." She wiped the corner of her mouth in slow exaggerated gesture, but left the smirk in place. "The vermin are crawling the walls out there now. Half of them are going to show up tomorrow in tiny red dressed, even the males," she added gleefully cackling as she pictured it.

I was glad that vampires can't vomit. It would just give her something else to laugh at. Like she didn't have enough already. "Off you go, Pam." I flicked my hand so she knew I was serious. I needed to think, and I didn't need her snarking at me while I did it.

What the fuck just happened? I asked myself again, this time making sure to keep it an internal dialog. I had left her to think over being mine and her answer was to tell me that she needed to strap a rocket to her ass and see if she could achieve orbit.

What the fuck did that even mean?

Pam huffed, and slammed the door as she left. Bitch. I was so not in the mood for her drama right now. Doing what I did best I went over everything in my mind from the moment she had walked in. Before I got to the part where she held out her hand to me, summoning me with the fire in her eyes, I was hard again. Glancing down at the rocket I had in my pocket I wondered if this was the same one she wanted to strap to her ass?

I growled. Would that mean she had consented to be mine? I was sure I had blown it last night. I had tried so hard to show her what she meant to me, and she had run away, acting as though offering her everything I was insulted rather than impressed her. I had been stewing on my throne trying to figure out what to do next when she had sashayed in and blown my fucking mind.

Who was this woman? Not tame demure Sookie Stackhouse. No, this was Fairy Sookie. And Fairy Sookie wanted me?

Fairy Sookie wanted me. I dropped this question this time and let it play through my mind.

Fairy Sookie wanted me. Fairy Sookie wanted me.

But there were two Sookie Stackhouse's. One of them wanting me was not enough. I needed both of them to want me. I needed both of them to open their hearts to me. I knew that if I could make that happen I would find myself through the door of her heart. That I would come to understand why she made me feel the way she did. Why… I would know why at long last.

Gods, she was more than even my fantasy Sookie had been. When she came on my leg in the middle of Fangtasia it drove me wild. It told me that what mattered to her was me, and the rest of them could just go fuck off. I felt my heart ache at the notion that she could place me first, her desire for me above everything and everyone else.

And she trusted me. Not only with her passion but her safety. She had leaned back knowing that I would never let her fall. That was more arousing than anything else that she had done, to know that she could trust me to stop her from falling as she offered me everything I had ever wanted. I felt a smile spread over my face and was very glad I had made Pam leave so she couldn't see how happy it made me to know that I had her trust.

Fuck. I had her trust. What did I do now? It was a very small voice that answered me in the depths of my mind.

Make sure you give her no cause to regret it.

Yes, make sure you give her no cause to regret it. Right. Makes sense. I glanced around the room, expecting to see brain matter on the floor underneath my hand prints because obviously I had lost my fucking mind somewhere along the way tonight.

Fuck it. Clearly, good things happened when I didn't over think my shit and run it in the ground. Closing my eyes I asked the tiny voice in my head to tell me what to do next. How do I not fuck this up? After a moment the voice answered me and I smiled as I reached for my keys and phone and headed out the door.

32XXXXXXXXXX23

Next day, around noon

SPOV

I was finishing the lunch dishes when the doorbell rang. I checked before answering, and found a delivery man waiting for my signature. Taking my package into the living room and sitting down I took a deep breath. What happened when I opened this was going to make or break this new fragile thing that I put in motion last night.

As I thought of what I had done and said, part of me was mortified and part of was whooping in pure delight. Shaking my head at my own foolishness I opened the package.

**_Sookie-_**

**_Wait for me tonight, let's build this together._**

**_Eric_**

I laughed for about ten minutes nonstop filled with joy and delight in every fiber of my being when I saw what was in the box.

It was an Estes model rocket kit.


	3. Hypothetically Speaking

**Orbit/Hypothetically Speaking**

**EPOV**

I wouldn't say I was scared when I touched down in front of her freshly painted house, but the not saying it didn't make it any less true. I would have admitted to anxious if someone had held a stake to my heart.

The model rocket had seemed perfect last night when I stood in the mall staring it, a feeling of laughter and hope in my heart, but tonight when I had awakened it seemed like it might have been the worst idea I could have had.

Ever.

What if she hated it?

What if she thought it was lame?

What if she built it today when I was resting and fired it at me when I knocked on our door?

_Our_ door.

Well, technically_, my_ door, but the house was a sore subject for her, and I had made it worse. It was supposed to show her that _she_ mattered, that _I_ cared. I thought that was what I told her when I told her she was mine. Somehow, she heard something else.

Did she think I claimed just anyone?

Shaking that off, I moved to the door and knocked. _This couldn't be any worse than facing Russell Edgington, right?_

_No, not all,_ I answered myself. _I mean, he would have taken your life, Sookie can only break your heart._

_Right?_ Right.

***FUCK***

I had run a thousand scenarios in the flight over. None of them were what I actually got.

At the sound of my knock the door jerked open and then she was in my arms, hitting me with a force that drove me back a step on our porch. At first, she turned her face to the side, her cheek against my chest and then after a few moments of squeezing me and making an "mmmm" sound when she let go she rested her chin on my chest and looked up at me.

I was speechless.

Fairy Sookie was still in the _hiz-zouse_, as the rappers say. I could see her dancing merrily in my lover's eyes. She had tiny wings of fire and an evil little grin on her face, or so I imagined as I tried to reconcile this woman with the one who had fucked me senseless at Fangtasia twenty four hours ago.

"Hi," she said, looking up at me smiling slightly. My arms had come around her by reflex when she hugged me and now one of my hands moved up her back, under her long hair to rest at the back of her neck and head.

"Hi," I said back, looking down at her and feeling all the tension I had about the gift leave me. Obviously, it was a hit.

She stepped back then and took my hand leading me into our house without a backward glance. I swung the door shut behind me and followed her to the dining room table where the box containing the rocket was waiting for us. She indicated which chair she wanted me to take and then rather than pull out her own she sat down in my lap, resting her back to my chest.

As my arms came around her to reach for the box my head was next to hers, my chin on her shoulder and I felt my cheek brush against hers. I froze when she turned her head slightly and kissed me softly on that same cheek.

There are moments were passion thunders, echoing in the valleys of the soul over and over again. There are moments when a body can comfort another like no other feeling in the world. It is a rare occurrence when those moments of passion and comfort are one, but her simple gesture did that.

She humbled me with her display of feeling and comfort in my presence that was wrapped in that one moment.

_When in Rome,_ I thought, pulling her back closer to my chest and leaning forward to maintain that contact, I opened the box and began to remove its contents.

"I've never done this before," she said watching my movements intently.

"Me either." I told her so that she would know this was all new to me, too.

"It won't be easy."

"I wouldn't want to do it if it were. Would you?"

"Probably not. I wouldn't know how."

"We have everything we need right here," I told her, kissing her cheek now trying very much to instill the same magic in the gesture that she did.

"Yes, I think we do," she nodded agreement. "What do we do first?" she sounded slightly out of breath, though she was sitting still on my lap, in the circle of my arms.

"We trust each other."

"Really?"

"Yeah, is that so hard, Sookie? For you to trust me?"

"Well, I thought we might just read the directions?" she said holding up the paper and turning to look at me with an eyebrow raised.  
**SPOV**

There was something strange about insecure Eric Northman that brought what he called Fairy Sookie bubbling to surface.

It was absolute pure evil that had me teasing him with rocket kit instructions when I knew good and well he had been talking about _us_. That_ we_ had been talking about _us_.

_I_ had been talking about_ us_.

I understood in that moment of watching his face crumble why he enjoyed pulling my chain so much and why insecure Sookie brought out the evil mean Sheriff of Area of Five so easily.

It was a game of chicken. Who would pull back first?

How much resistance did the other one have to give before faith was lost in believing that we had something here?

How much could we risk before we had so much of our hopes and hearts on the line that no amount of "Oh, I was just kidding," would save lost face and make denials believable?

I had committed to crossing that line when I demanded he pleasure me against the wall in his office.

Had he crossed it when he told me that I was his now?

I could not leave him there, no matter how evil Fairy Sookie might be. Before he could speak and attempt recovery from the "misunderstanding" I had led him into, I dropped the paper on the desk and turned in his lap to face him.

"You may have seen the warning on the box, this rocket can be slightly evil, that it might tease you a little from time to time?" His very intense blue eyes looked deeply into mine and I saw a mixture of things that I didn't really understand.

"I must have missed that," he said holding my gaze, his hands resting on my hips. I brought mine up to rest on the sides of his face, rubbing his cheeks with my thumbs, loving the feel of his short stubble against my skin.

"Oh, yes, it clearly says that in addition to being slightly evil and teasing that it can also be demanding, high maintenance, pouty, insensitive, but never boring. Didja see all that?"

"I didn't know the box was so big," he answered, his eyes still large and earnest as he held my gaze.

"Fine print," I mumbled back.

"I see," he said, still holding me in his hypnotic gaze. "The market research on people who buy rocket kits indicate that they can have poor communication skills, inevitably choosing the worst word combinations possible when they count the most."

"Oh, really?" I asked, both eyebrows going up in surprise at his words.

"Absolutely," he confirmed before going on. "They say one thing and mean something else entirely. Sometimes."

"Hrm," I said lowering my eyes brows and bringing a finger to my chin as I struck a thoughtful pose. "Is there a translation tool in that box?"

"Sadly, no."

"Too easy, right." I tapped my chin and continued to look thoughtful.

"But, hypothetically, if the purchaser of said box were to say something like, oh I don't know, "I own the house, so I own you," for example, just picking something at random. I have it on good authority that what he would mean is, "I bought your house and restored it because I believed every night that you would return. I cared for it as I would for you, if you gave me a chance to show you."

"WOW! That's what he would mean, hypothetically, speaking, really?"

"Oh, yes, it just much more economical to use the shorter version."

"Hrm, it might be better received if they took the time to go round the long way."

"Maybe. I will make that suggestion to the researchers, so they can adjust their studies. Bring in new control groups. Perhaps, begin, again?"

"So, the people who purchase rocket kits are just as complicated and demanding as the kits themselves?" I asked, to see if we had arrived at the same conclusion on this topic that we were hypothetically discussing.

"Early testing results support this conclusion," he said, rumbling in his chest as my arms slid up and around his neck and I moved in closer to kiss him, a reward I felt we deserved to being almost open and honest about what was happening between us. "I do have one last question though," he said just before my lips touched his. I sighed and rolled my eyes.

"Really?" I asked him, holding still right in front of those lips that looked like they so very much needed my kisses.

"Yes, really." I could kiss them right now if they would quit talking.

"What is it?"

"Well, we know about the kits themselves and the people who buy them, but I am not sure I understand anything about girls who strap them to their ass to achieve orbit?"

"Shhh, stop talkin', come here and lemme show you."


	4. Seeing Stars

**Orbit/Seeing Stars**

**EPOV**

Finding someone who could play with you, keep up with you and sometimes, as she had just demonstrated, take the lead was exhilarating.

And terrifying.

I suppressed my fear with more of her hot kisses and found myself arranging her on my lap to my advantage, and if the sounds coming from her between kisses were any indication, perhaps it was to her advantage as well.

Those soft little moans of pleasure that my hands and lips were evoking from this woman went straight to the man inside me, making him hard and proud and creating an undeniable need to see how many more sounds I could conjure from this magical creature in my arms.

"We're…supposed…to be…building…somethin'," she said as she kissed her way from my shoulder up my neck and stopped at my ear, blowing the "something" in her question actually_ into_ my ear, making me shiver.

I couldn't get close enough to her, this woman who calmed me. This fairy who whipped me into a frenzy the likes of which I had not experienced before. As her "something" melted my brain, her hands tangled themselves in my hair, mussing it and me again. I leaned into her touch like a preening cat, my hands pressing her down on the part of me that needed her most.

Flashes of her red dress dance, her face as I buried myself inside her, holding her against the soon to be pulverized wall which I had sacrificed in trying to release my tension and keep her safe.

Need and want blurred together and there was just Sookie.

Never enough Sookie.

Too much Sookie.

Sookie, Sookie, Sookie.

"We are building something," I assured her as I moved to her neck now, with slow, open mouth sucking kisses, designed to make her feel the same sense of frenzy and need that he had created in me, when she told me to shush and kissed me as though I were this infamous rocket she kept on about.

And maybe, just maybe, I was.

"Wh-what are we buildin'?" she asked, gasping out her words as she wriggled in my lap looking for just the right angle that would ease the ache she was feeling. I wanted to help her with that.

My hand slid up her leg, and slowly unbuttoned her jeans, before diving into them and finding all her needy places in one brush of my large hand. "Ohhhh, fuck! You got the best hands!" Determined to live up to that praise and love this woman to the edge and beyond I focused on finding just the right spot, just the right rhythm.

"Trust," I whispered as I kissed her, drinking her pleasure into myself.

"Excitement," I added when she freed me to speak again.

"Love?" she asked as she writhed in my arms, head back, eyes closed, the most glorious look of passion on her face as she mindlessly spoke, most of her attention focused on the pleasurable sensations my hand was causing her.

"Only for Sookie," I answered as lost as she was in what was happening. Her head snapped up when I spoke so sharp I heard her neck pop and felt her body tense against mine. Our gazes locked and I actually saw her start to come undone in my arms, as though my words had touched some secret place inside her that she herself had only just discovered with me.

I would have given anything to read her mind in that moment.  
**SPOV**  
_Only for Sookie…_

He had said those words to me a week ago. A year ago. A lifetime ago, in a dream, in a city far from where we were in this moment. It seemed random, but I could almost see the connections to those times, place and people.

Was_ that_ the dream, or was _this_? I remembered the feeling of his body covering mine in those sheets and how complete I had felt in his arms, my legs around his hips as he moved inside me.

Safety and love.

Exactly what I felt here and now with this same man.

Was this a dream? It was then that he touched me in the just right place, in just the right way and I bubbled over, spilling over the man before and beneath me, believing he would hold me, keep me safe.

It was the first time I had believed in anything since I was a child.  
**EPOV**

She fell against me, gasping as I pulled every last ounce of passion from her. I could smell the salt of her tears but did not press her to explain. If it was important, she would tell me. I snuggled her close and pretended that I did not need her so much that I was in physical pain. I just wanted to hold her close, and keep this feeling for as long as we could.

Lucky for me, she was as focused on my pleasure as I was hers.

"Come on," she said, standing slowly and tugging at my hand. I stood, adjusting my jeans to get some relief and let her lead me to the living room where she picked up the ugliest afghan I had ever seen and led me to the front door of our house.

Out the door we went and into the yard. She picked the place where the break in the trees showed us the biggest swath of night sky and then spread the blanket out on the ground. Sitting she held her hand up for me to join her and carefully I sat down beside her, longing to ditch my jeans and stop the unbearable pressure on my body that wasn't her mouth, her hands, her body, but I held back, still not clear what her intentions were.

She moved into my lap again, kissing me like it was contest and she had her heart set on the blue ribbon. I was panting when she moved to my neck, which was only so she could whisper in my ear.

"I'm afraid, Eric," she said, not stopping the kissing, just adding in the words between them.

"Of what?" I pulled her closer to comfort her, trying to bring my eyes to focus on something beyond the bundle of warm woman in my lap.

"You're going to make me fall in love with you."

"I'm afraid of that, too." I told her, kissing her neck now, as reverently as she was kissing mine.

"Really?" she asked, sounding surprised and uncertain.

"Absolutely. I'm afraid you're going to fall in love with me, too." I was wrapped around her now, and kissing along her hair line on the side of her neck.

She snorted in my ear. I suppose I had it coming but still, it was loud and unexpected and most un-Sookie like. "What? It's a valid concern and I am being supportive, Sookie. You are at significant risk. I am handsome, rich, funny, and charming. It's almost unavoidable!

"If you fell in love with me, you would expect me to pleasure you all the time. No wall would be safe from your demands that I take you against it. Did you see what I did that wall? It'll never be the same again. I _scarred_ the wall for you, Sookie." I had kept kissing her all through my exaggerated tirade and was rewarded by her giggles that rang out into the night.

"Should we take up a collection at Fangtasia to get your wall some therapy?" She managed to get out between giggles. I moved the hair from her neck and looked at my fang marks there in the moonlight. She was still wearing them, and they marked her as mine.

"No, I want to leave the scars there, so I can remember," I said to her as she had to me. She gulped air and spoke again.

"What happens, Eric, if _you_ fall in love with _me_?" I pecked her on the lips and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Well, first, I would buy your house and restore it. Then I would ask you to be mine with all the wonderful and crazy that entails."

"And if that happens, then I'll know how you feel?"

"Definitely."

"I'll keep my eye out then. Wouldn't want to miss anything." It was my turn to laugh. I fell back on the afghan and pulled her on top of me. It felt good just to be there with her like that, I could have stayed forever.

Sookie, however, had other plans.

It was either payback or reward and like most things between us, it was near impossible to tell the difference. I only know that I ran out of Norse gods to thank when she took ahold of the button on my jeans and slowly started to remove them, and that a few minutes later I ran out of Norse gods to beg for forgiveness to save me from what I now knew to be her plan.

"You see that sky full of stars up there, Eric?" she asked as she pulled my clothes off, one slow gesture at a time.

"Yes."

"Good, I bet having been around as long you have that you know the names for every last one of them, don't you?"

"Uhhh, some of them." Almost none of them was more like the truth, but I was afraid that if I spoiled that part of her plan, I would spoil all of her plan, and some of it I really, really liked.

A LOT.

I could tell from the getting naked part that was happening right now.

"So, I am going to pleasure you as long as you can keep naming the stars above your head. If you stop, I stop."

I wouldn't be able to think once she wrapped her mouth around me, and she would remove her mouth if I couldn't think. It was like a Chinese cock trap! The more I tried to get out of it the less satisfaction there was to be had.

"Oh, you are cruel, milady!" I told her, on the edge of begging for another set of rules when the hussy looked at me and winked.

"Learned from the best, Mr. I'm Afraid You're Going To Fall In Love With Me, Too."

_'__But never boring_,' she had said to me. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that she had taken a pen and written that part on the box lid herself.

"Careful, Miss Stackhouse. Keep seducing me like this and I might buy your house and ask you to be mine."

"You might at that. And you know what I would do then?" I could only imagine.

"What?"

"School you in the ways of love among the stars." She licked her lips then and took me in her hand, stroking with just the right amount of pressure to make me close my eyes and flex into her hand seeking release. "Get to naming, Northman. I can't strap you to my ass and take you into orbit if you don't know where you're going." I was not able to speak until she slowed down and then I only wanted to curse my blue balled frustrations the night sky.

"Name just one, and I will suck the tip of you until you can name another. The faster you name them the faster I will work you to release. Ready, smartass?"

Can you buy a house you already own?

"Gemini!" I screamed triumphantly. She smiled her wicked Fairy Sookie smile and then I answered the age old question about whether Heaven was real.

Heaven, despite the flowery prose and fiery rhetoric, was a waitress in a small town who held my heart in her hands and my cock in her-

"OH MY GOD, DO THAT AGAIN, SOOKIE!"

"You're supposed to be naming the-"

"FUCKSAGITTAIRUSTAURUSCANCERPICESSCORPIOCASSIEOPIA!" She brought her hands up under my hips then, clenching my bottom and set to work in making me call down the heavens.

"ORION! LEO! THE BIG FUCKING DIPPER!" She swirled her tongue and I swear my brain took the same spin around my cranium. She was just that good. I was so close I was babbling now.

"Stackhousearonicus! Andromeda!" She brought her hand up then to cup my balls, rolling them gently in her palm while pressing her finger into the bundle of nerves that rested just beneath them taking control of my body as though it were her own. She moaned when I splashed onto her palate like I was a fine wine.

"SOOKIEVERSE!" I finished, naming all of creation after the woman smiling up at me. It felt right because she was fast becoming everything to me.

I pulled her up and rolled her so I could bury my face in her neck. She was hugging me. "You're The Big Fucking Dipper in this Sookieverse," she whispered to me, kissing my cheek as she had earlier at the table, again magically combining passion and comfort effortlessly into one. I said the only thing a smartass like me could say.

"Maybe it wouldn't be_ so_ bad if you fell in love with me after all."


	5. Flash & Fire

_I pulled her up and rolled her so I could bury my face in her neck. She was hugging me. "You're The Big Fucking Dipper in this Sookieverse," she whispered to me, kissing my cheek as she had earlier at the table, again magically combining passion and comfort effortlessly into one. I said the only thing a smartass like me could say._

_"__Maybe it wouldn't be _**so**_ bad if you fell in love with me after all."_

**Orbit/Flash &amp; Fire**

EPOV

She giggled beneath me, "Clearly you need to go read the fine print again."

"It wouldn't matter. You're going to love me no matter what the instructions tell you to do."

"How do you fly with an ego that large?"

"Practice." I had been kissing her neck while we bantered, still covering her body with mine. I could not recall when I had felt this good or had this much fun in my long, long life. For all my imaginings, they fell so short when stacked against a warm teasing sated Sookie in my arms beneath the stars.

"You are probably right, and I shouldn't let it happen," she said into my neck, pulling me closer to her as her words worked to drive a wedge between us.

"Why, Sookie?"

"It might not be safe for you, Eric. The fairies may come back for me any minute now." I felt her peak around us then and when she stilled I realized she was listening with her telepathy to see if we were still alone.

"What happened, Sookie?"

"I was tricked into going with them, and when I got there they tried to make me into eat a fruit that would prevent me from leaving ever again. I barely made it back, and they seemed pretty serious about keeping me."

"Do you want to go back?"

"No!" I sighed with relief.

"Then we will do what we can to keep you safe and here with me."

"With you, huh?" She smiled her playful smile again and I relaxed even further into her and feeling her arms around me.

"Yes, with me, Miss Stackhouse. For as long as you want."

"Could be awhile. You sure you don't want to read that box again before you get in any deeper?" I answered her with a kiss. When I had kissed all the smart ass out of her for the moment I stood, adjusted my clothing and extended my hand to her. She was folding the blanket when music from the phone in my pocket disturbed our quiet peaceful evening.

_(I'm a driver; I'm the winner;  
Things are gonna change  
I can feel it)  
Soy un perdedor  
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?_

Sookie cracked up while I dug into my pocket to stop Beck from announcing the desire of my King to speak with me. Asshole. I would love to kill him, now more than ever. Who would have even thought that was possible?

"Northman," I answered in clipped tone that should have told that asshole I was busy. Perhaps it did and he just didn't give a shit. One of the many reasons I wanted to see that termite choking on splinters.

"Sheriff, I need to speak with you. Immediately." I rolled my eyes.

"Yes?"

"Not over the phone. I believe you are close by." That perverted son of a bitch knew I was at Sookie's. Had he been watching us? If so and I found out he would be choking on splinters tonight! "Come at once," he said and terminated the call. She turned to me with large eyes in the moonlight.

"Fuck! I was so worried about fairies I forgot that my lying psychotic ex was your boss now." She dropped the afghan on the dewy grass her hands in fists. Before she could say something that would ensure the king's death and cost me this delicate and fragile piece of my heart that we had been carefully nurturing all night I kissed her again, crushing her close to me. When I stopped I looked at her and spoke my heart.

"If you decide that you don't want to give this a chance, then I will respect that but I need that decision to be because _you _don't want it, and not because of _anyone _or _anything_ else. Please, Sookie. Don't shut me out now because of things that are beyond my control!"

"But, how can I let myself care about you, and put in you in danger? I should be strong enough to send you away to keep you safe!"

"Perhaps, who I am to say what should be done? I can only tell you that sparing my life would mean nothing because this is the most alive that I have felt in a millennia. You sending me away is just another form of death for me. Don't do it for what _might_ happen, Sookie!" She flung her arms around me then, and sobbed. I kissed the top of her head and hugged her back.

"It's not how much time we have, Sookie, it's how we spend it."

"And you want to spend it here?" she mumbled into my chest.

"More than anything else in the world. We got a rocket to build, remember? I plan to send your ass into orbit, just like you wanted." She sniffled then and looked up at me.

"He knows you are here, doesn't he?"

"Probably," and if he didn't already he would when I rolled in smelling of her from head to toe.

"Whatever he wants you to do, it's going to be dangerous. It may not seem that way, but I know him, Eric, now better than ever! Don't trust him! You roll into things all flash and fire and with that massive ego shining like a beacon for your enemies to aim at! Promise me that you will be cautious and think about not only what you are doing but also the consequences of those actions."

I looked at her, astounded by what I was seeing in the woman before me. That time in Fae had done something to her that I could not yet fully see or measure. "PROMISE ME!" she yelled, doing her best to shake me and ensure that she had my full attention.

"I promise," and I sealed my vow with a kiss. "Let's go inside, Sookie. I have to do something before I go." I asked her for a pen and paper when we got inside. When she handed them to me I stabbed the pen into my arm and wrote in blood that the house was now hers again.

"When I leave he will come here. As long as the house is in my name he can enter if he chooses. I would have you protected, Sookie." She looked at me, stared into the center of me, and when I handed the paper to her, she took it and put it on the table and then raised my wounded wrist to her lips.

The first touch of her lips on my skin was intoxicating. The second made me so hard I thought I would split my jeans. When I felt her suck the wound I _nearly_ came in my pants. When I saw her eyes roll back in her head and heard her moan in pleasure as I traveled down her throat, I _did _come in my pants. Her blood smeared lips took mine then and I was lost in her.

All the places that I had once touched were mine again. I could feel her heartbeat, and it felt like my own heart was beating. She pulled back from the kiss and told me softly to stay here. She returned with a warm washcloth that she offered to me for clean up before I headed out across the cemetery to face the tiny despot that now ruled Louisiana.

"Come back tonight, if there is time?" she said to me.

"Yes, if there is time," I answered between kisses. "If not, I will be here tomorrow as soon as I can?"

"Yes, as soon as you can, please." Like she had to ask, let alone beg.

"Save that kit for us to build together?"

"Do you think we will ever get it together?"

"Oh, yes, I think we will, Sookie. We just need some time."

32XXXXXXXXXXX23

The fucker made me wait in the foyer for ten minutes before he let me into his study.

"Sheriff Northman," he greeted me, and while I was doing everything I could to be civil and calm, the pressure in me was relieved considerably when he took a breath and pulled in all the Sookie cologne I was wearing with pride. I smiled pleasantly, and bowed, twirling my hand in front of me.

"Majesty."

"There is a group of necromancers practicing in Shreveport. Shut them down."

"Necromancers? You're certain?"

"Yes, I had a spy in the group. Last night they resurrected a bird." I raised a brow. He took it as a sign of contempt, but as usual he didn't understand me. "This is serious, Sheriff and I need you to handle it. The last time-"

"Yes, I remember. I was in Europe when Logrono happened." I loved reminding the little prick of my age.

"Of course," he nodded stiffly, properly chastised. He dismissed me without asking about Sookie, which told me what I had feared was very likely. He would make a beeline for her house once I left.

I swallowed my rage and decided to trust her and listen to her warnings. As I flew toward Shreveport I thought over her words. Something about them echoed to me. When I landed on the roof and looked down through the skylight what she had jarred came back to me in full.

I had been in Lafayette's car telling him that he couldn't just go into every situation all flash and fire. That he needed to tailor himself to his clients. Seeing him in the circle below me brought that night back.

If I had not shown up the werepanthers would have made a meal of him. I sent up a silent thanks to Sookie for her words of caution when I saw him sit down and in the circle and sensed that it was his power that really got things rolling down there. No one else seemed to have noticed it, all their eyes were trained on one they called Marnie. She appeared to be the leader of the group.

I watched them for a while as they chanted and worked on how best to handle this situation. I had just made my decision when I felt a spike of rage from Sookie that brought be my knees. Immediately I texted her.

**Fine**, she sent back. **HRH just came by. I handled it. U ok?**

**Yes thanks to you. Explain later. **

**K**

I waited for the witches to leave for the night and as Marnie came out last I came down in front of her and captured her in a glamour before she could speak.

"You will pack up everything tonight and leave Shreveport. You will tell no one where you are going. You will remember nothing of this conversation. You will go to Nevada and set up shop there where you can do whatever you want. You will never return to Louisiana again, and if you even think of coming back you will become violently ill." I stayed to help her pack, first her boxes and then her car. In vamp time we were done in fifteen minutes. I followed her to the Shreveport line and then turned back to Bon Temps. It was two in the morning, plenty of time to get back to Sookie.

_Merry Christmas, DeCastro_, I thought as I put on an extra burst of speed to get back to my lover.

32XXXXXXXXXX23

SPOV

I didn't plan to take his blood. I hadn't thought about it one way or the other. It was pure instinct when I saw him stab his wrist and bleed for me in tribute for my safety. That gesture touched me deep inside. He didn't flinch, why would I?

Of course, the down side was that tasting the man who had just wounded himself to protect me made me want him so badly that I was dizzy. I couldn't stop thinking of what he felt like inside me while the wall of his office held us up. I wanted that again and I wanted it before he left me.

It was only my concern for his safety and my desire to keep him focused on his promise to me to be careful and think before he acted that helped me let him go. And my reward for this self-restraint? Douchebag Compton on my doorstep a little over an hour later.

No good deed goes unpunished.

"Sookeh!" He called out from the porch. I rolled my eyes, thought about ignoring him and then realized that I had a head full of things I wanted to say to him since he rolled up here a few nights ago, saying that he knew he had no right to be here, but still being here anyway. I jerked the door open and looked at the liar on my doorstep.

His lips were moving but all I could see was his face the night he told me that he had planned to tell me everything about how and why he had made me fall in love with him…_someday_.

"Sookeh!" he called again and tried to step into my home as though I had invited him. The look of pain of his face when the invisible barrier that Eric had erected to protect me was comical. "Sookeh?" he said, pouting. One hundred and seventy five years old and he pouted! Well, come to that so did Eric, but he was cute when he did it. Bill was just a new shade of pathetic.

The angry words that I wanted to scream at him faded, even before I heard the tone for a text on my phone. Ignoring Bill, I answered Eric and then turned back to face my unwanted visitor. I wasn't angry anymore, because I didn't care about him at all. What he did to me was reprehensible, but the more emotion I poured into resenting him and those actions that could never be changed was a waste of energy that I could put into make my life better for me, and maybe for someone who truly cared for me.

In the end I didn't need to tell him, he saw it in my eyes and understood that the days of him touching me with his words were as long gone as the days of him touching me with his hands and body.

I belonged to myself now.

"Eric will only hurt you," he said, trying to cause doubt in what he now sensed was beyond his control to stop.

"Then he won't be the first," I said holding his gaze steadily.

"I can send him away," his royal highness making an appearance.

"I would just go with him." He blinked, not expecting that, so I took advantage and drove it home. "He's the one who never gave up. He's the one who waited. He's the only one who believed. It would be an honor to do the same for him."

"I can kill him."

"You can try." I laughed at his foolishness. Eric would have him for breakfast. "And if somehow you did succeed it would not matter. I am done with you, Bill Compton. He's not in the way, you are." I shut the door then and walked away. I felt him leave a few minutes later and sent up a silent prayer for Eric's safety on whatever mission Bill had sent him on.

Then I thought about what I had said and knew I meant it. I would leave here with Eric if he wanted me to, and if I lost him I would leave on my own without him. There was nothing here for me but him. Probably there had never been anything here for me but him. I would take this world by storm and toast him in every exotic city in the world, if I lost him now, but I would go on.

No woman truly worthy of him would do anything else.

EPOV

I used my key to let myself into the dark house. I expected her to be sleeping. What I found instead was a line of tea light candles on the floor that led to my cubby.

I swallowed anxiously, humanly.

We hadn't talked about that cubby yet. I had been waiting, in between everything else for her to let me have it over my presumptuousness of building a place for myself here. Then I had a V-8 moment when I finally realized that she had known I had a place to stay, which is why she asked me to come back.

Still the candles were good, right? How loud could she yell in candle light? Probably as loud as ever, I thought, hunching my shoulders and prepping for a late night eleven round knockout. Wonder if she will force me out now? I could sleep in the ground if I had to, I just really didn't want to do that. I locked the door, knowing my blood sacrifice would only keep out the psychos with fangs and then I climbed down to take my medicine.

My medicine was a mostly naked, Sookie sleeping in my bed. She had nodded off looking at one of my books. I gently took it from her hands and saw that it was one of the rare books I had purchased in her absence that was about the Fae. Mostly mythos, mostly inaccurate crap that had done nothing to bring her back to me. I had run out of ideas when she poofed back into my life. I didn't do well with running of ideas to solve a problem.

Her eyes barely opened before she sat up and hugged me, snuggling into me. "Yer back," she mumbled sleepily and then yawning. "I meant to be awake when you got here." I smiled.

"And why is that?" I asked her as her hands fumbled with my shirt, which wasn't going to come off until I removed my jacket, no matter how hard she tried to make that happen. She grunted in frustration and mumbled, "Off!" I was about to laugh at how cute she was when I found my shirt and jacket removed and I was sitting bare chested in the cubby. She moved on to fumble with my jeans and moment later she mumbled again and I was totally naked.

.AWESOME!

I could barely contain my glee at her new power and choice of use to demonstrate it.

I wanted to jump up and howl with glee.

I wanted to jump her and put all this perfect nakedness to use, but she was already nearly asleep against me again.

I let her rest there a moment and when she stirred again, falling back, pulling me with her down to the mattress. I spooned her from behind and felt my heart swell more than other parts of me when she snuggled into me and whispered before sliding deeper into sleep.

"Glad yer home."

And just like that, what had first been _her_ house, then _my_ house officially became **_our_** house.

How as a vampire supposed to get any rest when he was vibrating with joy?


	6. Under Your Spell

**Orbit/Under Your Spell**

EPOV

Sometime later that same night I was pulled from down time by a finger tracing patterns on my naked chest and warm still mostly naked Sookie curled around me, one leg over mine, resting between them intimately.

"Yer naked," she said in the dark when she felt me stir.

"You outta know," I said back, my hand coming up to rest over hers where my heart beat would be if I had one.

"What's that mean?" she asked a little indignant.

"You stole my clothes, Miss Stackhouse." Smug was rolling off me in waves. "I walked in and you poofed them away."

"I did not!"

"Oh, yes you do and it was fucking fabulous!"

"Why on earth would I do that even if I could?"

"Because you wanted to snuggle me."

"Ha!" she said in a disbelieving tone, completely contradicted by her snuggling me closer. I could not get the grin off my face and I was glad was dark or it would be one more thing for this hellion to tease me about.

"What happened with your mission tonight?" I filled her in, keeping her close.

"Witches? Like Samantha, witches?"

"Yes and no. These are real and they were working on controlling dead things." I felt her stiffen up beside me.

"But you took care of it, and you are safe now?" I was touched, and suddenly I remembered I wanted to **_be_** touched.

"Well, they might have cast a spell on me before I defeated and banished them. A spell that only _you_ can cure." I actually heard her eyebrow go up. She was picking up my mannerisms. I loved it.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, it's quite a painful spell unless you help with it." I shifted my lower body brushing my arousal against her leg. I was rewarded by a sharp intake of her breath as she realized what I was implying.

"Oh, my. A witch did that to you?"

"Yes, she did. She's quite something. About so tall, blonde hair, brown eyes and an ass that just doesn't qui-"

"Eric Northman! You watch your language!"

"Right, sorry, perhaps I could point her out to you instead? Would that be less offensive?" My hand slipped up to cup her breast then, my thumb brushing over her nipple. Feeling it harden under my touch and hearing her breathy response made the ache I had worse and not better.

"That's definitely less offensive," she sighed leaning into my hand, and encouraging my continuing my efforts in identifying the woman who had spelled me tonight. "Tell me more."

"Well," I said leaning down to kiss her slowly along her collar bones headed toward the treasure that rested in my hand. "She's all I can think of now, all I want to think of." I took her nipple into my mouth and sucked it gently, rewarded by her hand coming up to tangle itself in my hair. I growled softly, torn between wanting to keep doing what I was doing and in letting go so that my head could follow her hand. She was so warm, and she smelled heavenly, conjuring thoughts of what we had done last night.

"Touch me, Sookie, please." I groaned like a man lifting a heavy weight when she wrapped her warm hand around my shaft and started pumping it slowly in her hand. The pressure she applied was exquisitely right, like she was just born knowing how to touch me.

"Like this?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Just like that. You feel so good!" My hands tangled in her hair then as I pulled her lips to mine. After a few minutes of her kisses I turned us over on the narrow bed, and as though she could read my thoughts she opened for me, letting me rest between her lovely thighs, letting me press my hard flesh into the wet heat of her core. I shuddered as she moaned her pleasure beneath me.

"I want you, Sookie. So much!" I was so drugged on her that I had no idea what I was saying. I just knew that I needed her then, around me, holding me inside her body, inside her arms. I just needed Sookie.

SPOV

He said he needed me like he was afraid it was wrong to do so. Crazy vampire. He was supposed to have thousand years of experience on his side, couldn't he tell that I wanted him just as much? Couldn't he feel what he did to me?

"I thought I was going to die when I took your blood tonight I couldn't take the rest of you with it," I whispered in his ear. "I was dizzy with need for you, Eric. Please," I said to him, working to give him the words he seemed to need before he could give us both what we wanted so desperately in that moment.

I had feared him once. Thought him cold and uncaring, but I knew now in this moment that if I wanted to stop he would. I could feel it. I didn't want to stop though. Maybe not ever.

"Damn you, little witch! I want to take you slow, pleasure you for hours but you make it impossible for me to do anything but pound you into this mattress until you give me everything!"

Everything.

He had said he wanted everything, and now he was saying it again, with enough sex and need in his voice to make my body weep for him. I gasped for air, feeling like I was losing myself in this moment and that it was all right to do that.

I had told Bill I belonged to me now. That meant that I could do what I wanted to do. For the first time ever I could do what I wanted to do.

"Then do it."

EPOV

Her command removed my last hesitation and my last doubt that she wanted me. When I buried myself inside her, the last of my restraint left, too. I had told her that I wanted her to give me everything, but I found myself giving it instead of taking it.

When she gasped her pleasure I gave her my kisses to calm her. When her legs came up, crossing over my plunging hips I worked to find that spot that would show her the stars she had made me name earlier tonight on the lawn. She was so responsive to me, so open to what was happening that I had barely found it when she came apart beneath me. I saw her face in the dark and was moved near to tears at the joy I saw when her head fell back, her mouth a perfect O of ecstasy from my caress inside her. I lowered my head and took her hard nipple into my mouth again, prolonging her pleasure and pressing deeper into her when her nails ripped my back open in her mindless passion.

I wanted to love her for hours in the dark, but I couldn't hold back. She stripped me bare and I came into her again and again, calling her name before I kissed her, letting her taste the sounds of my pleasure.

I told her I wanted everything, and she gave it to me. I returned it to her and hoped that nothing would ever break the spell we found ourselves under.

32XXXXXXXXXX23

The next night I awoke to find her sitting at the foot of the bed, a baffled look on her face. "Where are your clothes, Eric?" I looked around the cubby and didn't see them. I hadn't given it much thought last night, but I could tell she had given it plenty today.

"Umm, I told you. You poofed them away when I got here last night."

"Explain that, please," she said looking at me sharply.

"You wanted me to undress, but you were half asleep and when you didn't get what you wanted to waved your hand and made them disappear. It was awesome!"

"Unh-huh, awesome. Will it be awesome when you have to walk around here naked?"

"It could be awesome?"

"Pfft," but at least she was smiling. "Seriously, Eric. I can't find them and if you hid them just so you could distract with you awesome as-"

"Sookie Stackhouse! You watch your language!" She giggled now, and climbed onto the bed with me.

"Sorry," she said coming in for a good evening kiss. I snuggled her next to me and started thinking about trying for some of long slow loving that had eluded us last night, but I could tell she was not thinking about that right now.

"I really don't know what happened to them, Sookie. Have you really ever not done anything like that before?" She shook her head and looked at me with fear clear in her eyes. I pulled her closer. "It doesn't matter. I will wear whatever you have here, and we will figure it out together."

"If I did do what you said, and you're not funnin' me, then something must have happened when I was in Fae."

"I'm not funnin' you, Sookie. I might tease you, but I will never lie to you or cause you pain. I would never betray you." She stared at me a long time and then said the best thing I could have hoped for.

"I believe you." I kissed her forehead then, lingering there with her despite knowing that I needed to rise and report my success to the king. I also had matters that needed attending at the bar tonight. I was going to have to shower and go soon.

It was the last thing I wanted to do.

I held her closer as I tried to figure out how to make this work with her when real life was such a bitch bent on keeping us apart. She shook me from my thoughts a moment later.

"I need to tell you what happened with Bill last night."

SPOV

Talking about my asshat ex was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to stay here in his arms, and forget that I had apparently entered into some advanced stage of freakdom where I could make things disappear with just a thought.

But, I couldn't let him walk into his next meeting with his king unaware of what had transpired last night after he left. I expected him to be angry. Instead he seemed more interested in what I had said than what Bill had attempted to do in warning me off him.

"You mean this, Sookie? You would leave with me?" Of course I mean it. I said it didn't I? Did he not want me? Was last night's disappearing clothes a deal breaker for him?

"If you wanted me to, then yes I would. Do you not want me to? Was last night's mystery of the disappearing clothes too much for you?"

"Woman, are you insane? You ask me, _me_, Eric Northman if I have been overwhelmed by your magical ability to get me naked? Did you fall and bump you head today?"

I laughed. What else could I do?

"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound kind of silly, huh?" He rolled his eyes at me. He was picking up my mannerisms. I loved it! "Do you think Bill will send you away? Or worse yet, try and kill you as he said?"

"Perhaps, but knowing that you would go with me opens the door for us to just leave of our own accord."

"And go where?"

"Where wouldn't we go?"

"Could we go to Egypt?"

"If you like."

"Scotland?"

"Yes."

"Aruba?"

"Sure."

"Cleveland?"

"Why?" he raised an eyebrow at that one.

"Why not?" I answered him in his own fashion.

"Why not, indeed. Yes, even Cleveland, if you like."

"Paris? London? Madrid? Estonia?" He snorted then. "What? There is ass there that I might need to kick if the stars aligned."

"You and your stars, Miss Stackhouse. Do you plan to blast off into orbit from all these exotic locals?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whether yer willing to assist." He kissed me then, and I knew that I could see the stars from anywhere in the world as long as he was beside me.

EPOV

When I came out of the shower she was waiting with a pair of basketball shorts and blue sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out. It was hardly the designer fair that I was accustomed to. I appreciated her efforts though, at least I did right up until I got them on and she burst into a fit of giggles.

"What?" I asked, turning around in a circle trying to see what she thought was so funny about me in her brother's left overs. She laughed harder.

"We had a dog when I was kid that used to chase his tail just like that!" Fine, two can play at this game. I vamped to her and pulled her against me, kissing the smart ass right out of her. She was all dewy eyed and panting when I let her go.

"Don't judge a book by its cover, Sookie." She opened her mouth and closed it again. Score one for the Harlem Globetrotter's reject! I strutted through the house to the cubby feeling confident that I had just showed her what for, but good.

My joy was squashed a moment later when I went to get my phone, only to realize that it too was MIA with my pants. That meant I had to go see the king in person. Which was not going to happen dressed like this. No fucking way. I was about to ask Sookie if she was interested in flying to Shreveport with me for some clothes when I heard a knock at our door, immediately followed by a voice and words that chilled my undead heart.

"Sookie, I've come for you."


	7. Perspective & Objective

_I was about to ask Sookie if she was interested in flying to Shreveport with me for some clothes when I heard a knock at our door, immediately followed by a voice and words that chilled my undead heart._

_"__Sookie, I've come for you."_

**Orbit/Perspective &amp; Objective**

**SPOV**

If I had been thinking straight I probably would have telepathically scanned before I opened the door, but I was still bamboozled from Captain Kissy Pants putting me in my place. When I opened the door I was shocked to see Claudine there, and yet not at the same time.

I had told Eric they were coming for me. I had told him that he would not be safe if he kept me in his life. But I hadn't listened, so why would he?

"Sookie, I've come for you."

"I'm not goin' back there." The words were barely out when he was in front me, fangs flashing, cold rage radiating off him in waves. He vibrated with his anger at this intrusion in what had been our pleasant simple evening. Claudine screamed and jumped back, terrified of the tower of man that had just inserted himself between us.

"You heard her. She doesn't want to go back there. Leave now! While you still can, fairy!" Claudine looked like she really, really wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, but instead of leaving she cast a look out into the dark, the fear on her face even greater than what Eric had put there. She turned back to me, catching my gaze as I peeked around Eric's shoulder.

Something wasn't right here.

"Sookie, I understand it must have been frightening what you saw in Faerie, but please..."

"Frightening? You're stealing people!" She held her hand out then.

"We are your true family. You belong with us."

"No, thanks. I am where I belong right here with, Eric."

"Sookie, we can keep you safe."

"Safe? When have you ever kept me safe?" Her eyes flicked to the dark again.

"Well, the night you met Bill Compton, for one. When that horrible little man came at you with his knife, and you wrapped that chain around his neck, I sent the energy that you sent to the chain, awakening the light inside you. I was there, helping you."

"How come you've never saved me from any vampires?"

"I couldn't risk it, being what I am. Vampires would kill me, and trust me, they will kill you. Now come with me while you still can. I must get you away from this monster!" She looked at Eric again, who had been holding his ground, waiting for some signal from me on how I wanted to proceed.

"I thought the Queen closed all the portals?" Her eyes flicked to the dark again and I realized she was talking to someone out there. Extending my reach I found a void, and managed to hear at least her side of the conversation.

She will not leave with me.  
I am trying to make her.  
I know what I promised you, vampire. I am here now, betraying my blood because you made me swear the oath!

"Come with me. Sookie, this is not a request."

"Stay away from me." Several things happened then all at once. Eric moved a step toward her, she reached out to me telepathically, and the vampire she had been talking to in the dark came forward with blurry speed.

When Bill grabbed her from behind and sank his fangs into her neck, her eyes pleaded with me, not to save her but to hear her. I grabbed Eric's hand to keep him inside with me. Safe. I needed him safe and in the parade of tricksters and liars fretting and strutting on our old front porch there was anything but safety out there.

_When Compton glutted himself on you and found his way to Fae he caught me and using ancient magic bound me to his will. He demanded I use Mab and her mad quest to collect all hybrids as a cover to get away and buy him time._

_I didn't know she would try to trap you. I thought we would have more time._

_I'm so sorry._

_Time to what?_ I demanded, but I knew it was no use, she was shriveling up before my very eyes as he once again glutted himself on Fae blood. Moments later she turned to dust, covering my porch in ash. Bill was weaving drunkenly, barely standing. Thinking quickly I stepped around Eric, motioning him behind me. I wanted all of Bill's attention on me.

Even with everything going on it made my heart ache a little with emotion when he squeezed my hand and stepped back to let me do whatever the hell crazy thing I was going to do.

"Claudine told me that you bound her to you Bill. She told me everything before you murdered her! Did you really think you could get away with it?"

"I only wanted to save you, Sookeh!" He stepped toward the door then, forgetting in his intoxication that he was uninvited. "Please! You must believe me! I wanted to keep you safe until I could deal with Sophie Anne and Eric. I told you that night before he showed up that I would do anything to keep you safe!"

"Yes and you certainly did do anything. I could be here all night listing all the things you did to ...'protect' me. Right up to and including killing my fairy godmother on our porch."

"'Our porch'? What the fuck do you mean 'our porch'?" I didn't answer him. I froze in horrified fascination as the veneer cracked on the southern gentleman he pretended so well to be. Instinctively, I stepped back. His eyes were like Rene's had been when I had finally seen the monster beneath his skin.

Rene had done terrible things, murder, rape, and he liked it. I saw then that Bill had, too. No, I saw that Bill did, too. I had stopped Rene, but Bill was still the Energizer Bunny of Evil.

I had been a beard that he used to hide himself, even from himself. So much time spent in correcting me, guiding me, molding me. All that attention on me left none for him.

"I bet you wish that vampire's really couldn't see their reflections, donthca, Bill?" Like someone rewinding film the muck of his long dead soul slid back up into him, and he looked at me with the same innocent face her had always shown me.

I had been such a fucking fool.

I turned then and walked away. Crazy screamed my name like it would make me come back. Like it would make me forget. Like it would hide the monster I would never unsee in his eyes.

He hadn't saved me from Rene.

He had saved me for himself.

It wasn't love that brought him out to burn on a sunny day. He just didn't want anyone else to kill me before he could.

It felt like my lungs had collapsed in my chest.

As I started to climb down into the cubby I heard Eric tell him that the witches were disbanded, and that his assignment was done. Then I heard the door slam and he was waiting for me at the bottom of the ladder to take me in his arms as soon as I turned to him.

**EPOV**

The look on her face told me that she was hurting. Deeply. Our new blood tie told me that she was hurting so deeply that at the moment she was numb. The feeling, the processing of that pain was still yet to come. I prepared myself to feel it with her, wishing we had a full bond so that I could take some of it from her.

I blinked at that thought as I made my slowly to the bed, holding her in my arms. I sat down and held her on my lap, tucked under my chin, arms wrapped around her

To be one with Sookie, did I want that? The quiet voice that told me to buy rocket kits seemed to know that I had always wanted that. The rest of me just wanted to be there for her right now. I was waiting for tears. I had started rocking her gently in my arms in preparation to sooth her. Instead of tears I got questions.

"How long have you known Bill?"

"Around a hundred years."

"He's a monster, isn't he?"

"Monster is a broad definition defined only by perspective and objective, Sookie. What do you mean when you say it?"

"He's a serial killer, not for blood, not for survival, but for sport, isn't he?" I sighed.

"Yes, he kills for pleasure. Or he did, back when I saved Pam from him. After that he became Sophie Anne's lapdog and spent his time finding lost souls, procuring them for his queen's pleasure, and his own."

"Pam? Hadley?" I felt her shift to look up at me and I shifted her slightly in my arms so she could see my eyes.  
"Pam ran a house of ill repute when I met her. Compton and his maker were fucking and murdering their way through her staff, with an eye on her. She and I came to…an arrangement, and I sent them packing. I never liked that bitch, or her progeny.

"As for Hadley. I know that Compton found her. I know that she told the queen of you and that the queen dispatched Compton to procure you for her."

"Because she wanted my blood?"

"So she could walk in the sun," I confirmed. How did I say what I needed to say next? There was no easy or best way. The best way was to just say it.

"Sookie, you must understand something." Her dazed eyes came to mine and I regretted more than anything what I had to say next. "Depending on your perspective and your objective, a case could be made that I, too, am a serial killing monster." Her eyes blinked at me and I let myself close mine for just a moment, shutting myself away from what I was sure would be her rage and rejection. Any minute now she was going to slap me, and leap from my arms forever.

So be it. I opened my eyes and continued with the very last fucking conversation I ever wanted to have.

"In all my years I have killed many, and before I leave I expect I will kill many more. I have taken the young and the old, the beautiful and the ugly, the guilty and the innocent. I have been death to them all. It is my nature to be this. I can't change that, Sookie." She looked at me for a long moment and then instead of rage and rejection I felt her hand slide into mine.

"Tell me what you thought the first time you knew I existed."

"The first I knew of you was when you came to Fangtasia to ask me of the women in the photographs, and I thought that I wanted to take you from Compton and make you mine."

"What did that mean then, to make me yours?"

"Hours of pleasure, in every form I could manage and then some time to invent some new ones worthy of the feeling that seeing you inspired in me."

"And when you heard me proclaim myself as Bill's what did you think then?"

"What a pity, for me." She smiled at the memory.

"Did you ever think of hiring someone to beat me nearly to death so you could get your blood into me?"

"I confess, I did not. I did however, force Compton to bring you back to Fangtasia under the guise of needing your talent to out Longshadow. I already knew it was him. I just wanted to see you again."

"Why did you let him nearly kill me?"

"Well, it wasn't as close as it might have seemed to you. I can move very, very fast. Compton and Longshadow were of comparable age. I would have intervened before I let anything happen to you, I think."

"YOU THINK?"

"I wanted to see you again. You already had too much power over me. It would have been less of a risk to my own safety to let you perish before this went further." Her eyes were forming the tears that I had been expecting for some time now, but they weren't for Compton as I had expected. "I know this must be hard to hear, Sookie but I told you I would never lie to you. I am not human, and you must not view me as such, through the narrowness that humans use to see and measure each other.

"I have seen civilizations rise and fall. I have lived many lives and been many people. The man you can perceive before you is but a shadow of who I am, but…I want to share all that with you, if you will let me. If you can open your heart and your mind and see me.

"Can you see me, Sookie?"

"Would you save me now, if the Longshadow thing happened now, do you know if you would save me?"

"I've replayed that night countless times, and every time I save you. We've lived versions of that night over and over since, when the maenad attacked, in the bombing, from Russell, every day, every night, I save you."

"Sometimes, I save you, too." She said quietly, a single tear slipping down her cheek. I caught it on my thumb and brought it to my lips.

"Every day, every night, you save me, Sookie."

"I don't think I can really understand all the things that you said right now, maybe never, but I know the one thing that I needed to know."

"And that would be?"

"It was a pity for me, too."

**SPOV**

He was so brave. I could tell that he wanted to pretend that he was what he thought I wanted him to be, rather than what he thought he was.

But we can never see ourselves, not truly.

We spend our lives turning in a circle as he had tonight, like my dog had in childhood, like I had been doing since the night I met my first vampire, but we are never truly able to see ourselves.

Our sense of self is mostly defined by the people that we let into our lives. The people who fill up the negative space, and the positive space in our hearts and souls that otherwise we might spill through.

If not for those people we might let our precious selves run across the floor into nothingness.

Sometimes the people we let in saved us.

Sometimes they destroyed us.

Either way we were forever transmogrified by the experience of letting someone in.

I was taking a chance here on the vampire who held me in this arms like I might shatter at any moment, but so was he. To compare what he had on the table to what I had on the table was a joke. Mine seemed more to risk only because it was mine.

Thinking back to the petulant child who had muttered that he couldn't check me out like a library book whenever he wanted, and seeing Bill's face scrunch up when he told me that yes he could I saw with crystal clarity the difference between my two lovers and how they had both fooled me at the beginning, one with his sweet lies and the other with his brutal honesty.

"I'm sorry I could not see you sooner, Eric."

"I'm just glad you saw me at all." He leaned down and rested his forehead against mine, the tension draining from him. I was even more impressed to realize that he had said all that to me thinking that it would mean the end of this new thing between us.

Maybe it should have been the end of it. Maybe I just needed to do the opposite of everything that felt right, because Lord knows, I can't make a right decision until I make all the wrong ones, but no, I wasn't going to end it.

If he was brave enough to deal with my poofing his pants off and sending them into who the hell knew where, then I was brave enough to not be a hypocrite. I pulled him down to kiss him then. Trying with all my might to convey how very much I appreciated him and cared for him, not despite everything, but because of it all.

"I know you thought I was going to send you away, and you were brave enough to tell me all that anyway. You should have known you were worried for nothing, Eric." His eyebrow went up.

"Oh, and why is that?"

"Well, if I didn't break up with you after seeing you in those ridiculous clothes you should know that pretty much nothing will get me to leave you." I could barely keep the smile off my face as I teased him.

"You could poof them away again?"

"Then you would have to stay here, naked with me forever." He paused, rolled his eyes up and around, pretending to think that over.

"Not seeing the downside of that plan," he said, coming back in for another kiss. At the moment neither did I, because I knew that as soon as we come up from this magical hidey hole he had built for us that sooner, rather than later, we were going to have to kill Bill or he was going to kill us.


	8. A Date

**Orbit/A Date**

**EPOV**

_My Dearest Captain Kissy Pants,_

_Would you be so kind as to do me the favor of your company tomorrow evening? Please wear the enclosed. I will pick you up behind Fangtasia at 8:00pm._

_Your Fairy, Sookie_

I couldn't help but laugh. The imprint of her coral lips on the paper made me feel embarrassingly giddy. A feeling that I would not have owned out loud and that was removed once I saw what else the box contained.

A pair of khaki pants, a navy blue polo shirt, loafers, complete with navy socks to match, and a pair of thick rimmed glasses complete with dirty white tape on the side.

There as a whoosh of air beside me immediately followed by the sound of Pam cackling like she was about to lay an egg.

"CAPTAIN KISSY PANTS!" I fell back in my chair and just let her go. She would either stop or I would command her to.

It's good to be a maker.

"Oh, Eric, really?" She picked the clothes up off my desk and eyes them critically, and then with disdain. "What does she think you are going to do with this?"

"Wear them."

"No, no way, I forbid it." Before I could remind her that if any forbidding took place in this relationship it would be me forbidding her, she stopped and changed her tune completely. "No, this is great! Will you try them on now? Let me take a picture?" It was my turn to laugh.

Clearly, this bitch had lost her mind.

She huffed and dropped the clothes on my desk. I could tell she was circling the wagons and trying to get some new angle to have her way. I shuddered a bit inside seeing a picture of me dressed like this splashed across the Fangtasia website that she maintained. No fucking way that was going to happen.

"What does our little Sookie have in mind?" She asked, placing a hand on her hip while a devilish smile spread across her face. "I must say, I've never been a fan, really, but I'm starting to think she could change my mind." I rolled my eyes, and adopted an air of complete disdain.

"Pamela, I command you to not take a photo of me in this clothes when Sookie comes to pick me up tomorrow night." She pouted, but something in her eyes told me this wasn't done yet.

**SPOV**

He was waiting in the alley when I pulled up in my little yellow car, Kylie Minogue's I Just Can't Get You Outta My Head blaring full blast. He looked completely adorkable in the clothes I had sent him. I could tell he was into it because he had slicked his hair down and over to the side. He was also doing that thing I had seen him do at the church in Dallas, where he seemed to shrink five of six inches and look completely innocent.

I wanted him right there on the hood of my car.

Maybe later.

When he climbed in, smiling that innocent little boy smile, adding a panty melting soft, "Hi," that maybe became a definite. His ass was going to be mine. "So, where are we going?" He asked, maintaining the shy college boy persona that his clothes proclaimed him to be. I smiled and popped my gum. Loudly.

"SBAS," I told him, smiling at him like I knew a college girl would. Fifty percent innocence and fifty percent tigress. He swallowed nervously, totally committing to the role.

_I love him so much._

I hadn't thought about it, hadn't wondered and fretted. Just seeing him like that in that moment I knew all the way to my core. I loved him. It felt amazing and the smile on my face must have showed it.

"SBAS?" he repeated in that same innocent young college man tone that was going to get him laid over the hood of my car just any minute now.

"Shreveport-Bossier Astronomical Society," I said, smiling wider and was rewarded with another boyish smile.

_I just can't get you outta of my head_, Kylie sang in the background and I thought, Lord, girl, you don't even know the half of it!

**EPOV**

Her outfit complimented mine, right down to the glasses that she put on before we climbed out of Big Bird. Her car blended in perfectly with other POS college kid cars that filled the parking lot of the SBAS.

"The society is hosting an LSU stargazing event tonight." She said, taking my hand as she came around the car and moved toward the door. "We will need student ID's to get in."

"And you have those? There was none in my box."

"Nope." She popped her gum again, adding some sass to her step and wiggle to her walk. I let her get a few steps ahead so I could watch her hips sway as she walked.

"Then how do you plan to get in?" She giggled.

"Oh, I'm sure you will think of something."

"Like what?" I thought I was picking up what she was laying down but wanted to be sure. Rather than answer, she just laughed again, and swayed her hips a little more as she picked up the pace toward the door.

A few moments and a glamour or two later we were mingling in a crowd of kids dressed just like ourselves. Sookie grabbed two drinks from a waiter passing by and handed one to me to help with the blending. She took a sip and smiled up at me.

"So, tonight we will see the rings of Saturn." I raised an eyebrow behind my hideous horn rimmed glasses. "We will get five minutes alone with the giant refracting telescope to observe the heavens and educate ourselves about the stars."

I was about to say something completely out of character when I felt a tug on my shoulder and turned around to face a group of college girls who had gathered around me. I might have been dressed like a geek and playing the part perfectly, but I was still Eric Northman after all.

"Hi, I'm Sara!" the first one squealed, looking me over from head to toe like someone had just rang the dinner bell and I was the main course.

"Becky!" chimed the next one.

"Linda!"

"Jamie," the last one said, trying to sound sexy and seductive.

Before I could speak, Sookie slipped in front me and between us.

"And I'm Sookie!" Her words were pleasant, her tone was not.

"Sookie? Sookie? What kind of name is that?" Jamie huffed, clearly not getting the not so subtle hints that were being sent her way.

"It's the name of the girl who will wipe the floor with you if you don't put your eyes back in your head, take you friends and walk away, now." Jamie opened her mouth to speak again, but Sookie cut her off, doing a more than passable impersonation of me, "Now." I could swear I heard her growl at the end, vampire style.

I was so fucking turned on.

I started to say something. Anything that would release the tension around us as people started to stare and whisper. I caught "catfight" and then put my attention back on Sookie, wondering what she would do next if this group of college hellcats insisted on pursuing me.

**SPOV**

I felt my fists bunch and my legs ready themselves to propel me right into the middle of this band of girls who dared to approach him as though he were alone. As if I hadn't been standing right fucking there!

It wasn't jealousy. I knew Eric could have anyone he wanted, and he had said he wanted me. That was good enough for me. No, it mostly wasn't jealousy, not at all. It was the complete lack of respect. A complete lack of respect for him and for me who was obviously his date. I felt something turn over inside me, something large and powerful.

"Walk away," I told them, waving my hand, and to my total surprise they did indeed just turn around and walk away. I felt Eric come up against my back a moment before he whispered in my ear.

"What did you do, Sookie?" I turned to face him, looking into his beautiful blue eyes those hideous glasses did nothing to hide.

"I stood up for what is mine." He broke character for the first time since I had picked him up when he dipped me back old school movie star style and laid the mother of all kisses on me, right there, in the middle of the SBAS Rings of Saturn LSU event, proving that I didn't need a telescope to see stars.

**EPOV**

When we finally got our turn with the telescope I let Sookie look first. I was holding her hand in mine, my fingers laced through hers, needing to touch her but not wanting to distract her from star gazing.

"See if you can find The Big Dipper," I teased her in my college boy tone as I kissed her fingers. I took a quick breath when her hand landed on my crotch.

"Got it," she said, her voice filled with laughter.

"Yes, yes you do," I answered her, in anything but a light college boy tone as I felt her caress linger. "Did you mean it, Sookie? Am I yours?"

"Come here," she said, stepping back from the telescope and indicating that I should look now. Despite wanting her to answer my question and feeling slightly aroused from her tour of my heavens a moment ago I was moved to see the beauty of the far distant planet with its glorious rings.

"Beautiful," my inner college boy whispered.

"Yes, yes, it is," she said and I was pretty sure that she didn't mean Saturn or its rings. I turned to look at her and saw that she was fixed on me, as though she had just discovered me for the first time. I wanted to kiss her so very much in that moment, but the knock on the door came indicating our time was up.

When we left she drove us out of Shreveport toward Bon Temps, her hand in mine still and I thought she had forgotten my question. Suddenly, she took a side road, and drove about a half a mile out into a wooded area to a turnaround spot. She turned the car off and stepped out. I followed only to find myself pushed back to the hood of Big Bird. Her words came fast and breathy.

"When I picked you up tonight you looked so fucking good I wanted you right then and there on the hood of my car."

"Sookie, there is nothing between us but air and opportunity." She pounced on me then, pulling back from a mind blowing kiss long enough to grab the back of my hair and put her face right up into mine.

"Fuck, yes. Yes, you are mine!"

Later, after adding some new dents to Big Bird's hood, we were snuggled together in our bed in the cubby when I heard my phone ding indicating a text message.

Reaching down beside the bed and pulling the phone out of my pants I saw it was a link to the Fangtasia website. A moment later I saw me in all my geek glory smiling at something out of the frame. I knew it was Sookie pulling up to get me for our date.

I looked at the angle and realized she must have made Ginger climb the tree in the parking lot across from the back of Fangtasia and use a telephoto lens.

I had to appreciate her ingenuity. It was the perfect memento of my evening out with Sookie, which had been so incredible that I really didn't even give a fuck that it already had already gone viral.

32XXXXXXXXX23

_A/N- The SBAS is real and so is the event described, though I took some liberties with the date and imagining how the event itself would be._


	9. The Book of Us

**Orbit/The Book Of Us**

**EPOV**

Three nights later I opened to door of our home to find King Bill on our porch dressed in khaki pants, a navy polo shirt, and a pair of glasses did not need tape to stay together.

Of course, vampires didn't really need glasses, but the semantics of perfect night vision could be argued later, in a location far away from the person he had really come here to see in that get up.

"Sheriff," he greeted me stiffly.

"Majesty," I answered him the same.

"I had hoped to talk to Sookie this evening about helping me with the Festival of Tolerance that we have coming up soon." I raised a brow, and let my cold cynical smirk spread slowly across my face.

_I see you, Billy_, is what I told him with my look.

"Sookie, darling? You have a guest here to see you."

"Who is it?" her pleasant tone answered me, I could hear the devil in voice. She knew very well who it was.

"King Bill," I called back pleasantly, feeling anything but.

"Sookie, I'd like to talk to you about helping out with the Festival of Tolerance," he called out, leaning as far in as the magical barrier would allow him to, attempting to see her through the walls and around the corner. His best winning smile was on the display when she came into view, for a moment anyway.

The moment passed quickly when he realized she was wearing my tee shirt, and that my fang marks were very prominently displayed on her neck. The little vixen had even pulled her hair around to her other shoulder to make sure he saw them. She came up to me then, and though I had just left her moments before to answer the door, she curled around me, and proceeded to kiss me like she hadn't seen me a month of Sundays.

One of her phrases.

I thought it was darling, like I thought she was darling.

She ran her fingers through my hair like she knew I liked it and I growled for her and moved to her neck to kiss my marks on her reverently before moving to stand before my Kermit colored King with my arm around her, a hand resting suggestively on her hip. She added the scene by leaning her head against my chest before even looking at Bill.

"You were saying…?"

"Umm, the uh, The Festival of Tolerance that we are hosting next week-"

"I read about it," she said, cutting him off, her tone only a degree above frosty.

"Right, of course. I was hoping-"

"That coming here in that get up would convince me to come and work with you doing THE very last thing I ever want to do? Really? I can't tolerate _you_ Bill that was the point the last time we spoke." I watched his face, he was prepared for this. Even I knew where he would go next. It was the obvious play, one that he had enjoyed tremendous success with in the past.

"This is about more than you or I Sookie, this is about-"

"Human and vampire relations throughout the parish. Yes, I know. That is what I meant. You and I together would not convey the message you are looking for with this festival."

"Of course we would, everyone knows that you and I were deeply in love!"

"_I_ was deeply in love…with a liar, a manipulator, a monster. They will take one look at us together and see me as your victim, the same way I did for a while."

"But they don't see that when they see you with, Eric?" he raged, fists clenched and fangs coming down in his anger.

"I don't see myself that way," she said, her tone starting even and then getting happier as it went on. "I see myself as lucky, and special when I see myself with Eric." I glanced down to see her looking at me adoringly, which made this funny feeling happen in my chest. If Bill would go the fuck away I wanted to make some handprints against some walls in our house.

"Was there something else, Majesty?" I asked in my deepest 'Don't fuck with me' tone, switching my gaze from her to him, indicating that I was ready for this conversation to end.

"Yes, as your King I command you to come with me now. I still need help planning for the festival, even if Sookie is not interested in helping."

"I'll send Pam to help you."

"No, you will bring Pam, too. I require you both." Not only was I getting cockblocked by this Napoleon wannabe, this would leave Sookie alone.

Had that been his end game all along? Nothing that had transpired here would be a surprise to anyone with half a brain. I looked at him, still unsure if he was that smart, and then I recalled some of his past moves and realized that he might well be.

"I need a moment," I said, bowing to him, because I truly needed that moment with Sookie before I left.

**SPOV**

A moment ago I had wanted to tell Bill that beside Eric I saw myself as a woman in love, but I hadn't told Eric himself yet what I had realized the night of our date to SBAS. Now was not the time, and I was not where I wanted to be when I whispered in his ear that I loved him for the first time. He definitely wasn't where I wanted him, either.

When he told Bill he needed a moment he shut the door, and vamped us to the cubby where he kissed me softly, making me hate Bill even more for preventing what I had just seen in Eric's eyes from happening. He leaned down and whispered so quietly I could barely hear him, "I think this is plan to lure me and Pam away so he can try and get to you." I looked up at Eric, who was three parts concerned and one part absolutely fucking livid.

"How could he?" I whispered back?

"Were's?" Right, they didn't need an invite. I looked at Eric.

"What do you recommend we do?" He blinked at me, and then he started to smile the sweetest little boy smile I had ever seen on his face. My hatred for Bill grew that he was going to stop me from doing all the dirty little things that came to mind that would corrupt that sweet man before me.

"You never asked me that before," he whispered back, still grinning like a fool.

"I never asked_ anybody_ that before, but what's the point in hooking up with a thousand year old vampire if you can't count on them to have some valuable input every now and then?" He pulled me to him hugging me like he was never gonna see me again.

A streak of fear ran through me. Did he think that Bill was gonna do something that prevent him from ever seeing me again? If that asshole touched one hair on my Eric's head I was going to fry him up with my fairy lights! I growled then and hugged him tighter a moment before pulling back.

"What is it?"

"I will kill him if he tries to harm you!" I whispered still, because we had been to that point, but it did nothing to lessen the fury in my face and tone.

"I love you, Sookie." His eyes were so wide and innocent and I wanted to kiss him and strangle him at the same time.

"Damn it! I wanted to be the first one to say that!" His face split into a grin and then our lips were busy doing other things for a moment or two. When the kiss ended he sat down on the bed and pulled me into his lap.

I straddled him, knees on the bed, my needy body resting against his arousal, I wanted and hated so much in that moment that something inside me popped and I felt it run through me like a hot flash before it receded. "I want to taste you again," I told him, hot breath whispering in his ear, panting. The king was waiting, the world was waiting, but I had this moment.

In this moment I was in his arms, I was so close to him that I could hear the beat of my heart echoing in his quiet chest. There was no way to know what might happen in a minute, in five, in ten, in a thousand. The only thing I knew for sure that could happen in those minutes would be regret for what I failed to do in this one.

I had not tasted him since the night he gave the house back to me. We hadn't even discussed it. When I thought if it at all it was with a certainty that when the time came we would both just know it. Looking into his eyes, in this moment, I knew I had been right.

He kept them locked with mine when he dropped fang and tore his wrist open for me. Moving quickly I popped the button on his jeans, and stroked him a few times, while I leaned in to take his bloody lips. He thrust into my hand, then I turned, putting my back to his chest, and lowered myself onto him.

I had only been wearing his tee shirt, so it was very easy to give myself what I so desperately wanted in that moment. I wanted Eric. It was all I could think.

**EPOV**

When she said that she wanted to taste me, it was like a dream. When she turned in my lap and slid me into her warm tight body as she latched onto my wrist I was as close to nirvana as I was likely to ever get.

She moved on me in time with her sucks at my bleeding wrist, breathing deeply through her nose as she swallowed me down, making every little thing she felt more vibrant and real to me.

**YOURS.**

It sang inside me, echoing in my long chilled veins, chipping the ice away from the edges of my being.

It was instinct, not hunger that drove my fangs into her neck for the second time that evening. I raised my body off the bed at the same time, levitating up so that I could move deeper into her welcoming flesh, passing my need for more of everything deep into her.

When my wrist healed her head fell back on my shoulder, my hand came up to cup her breast, teasing her nipple through my shirt, triggering her back to arch against me, and hips to move deeper into mine. It was a move that forced me so deep inside I feared that it would hurt her.

If it did, it hurt so good, because all she could do was call my name, her body shaking in tremors and quakes of pleasure originating from the center of her that twisted and pulled at me like I was hers to do with as she pleased.

And I was.

"I love you, Eric!" She called out, as I emptied my own love and passion into her.

**SPOV**

I dressed slowly, thinking of his frantic whispers and touches after we made love. He wanted me to go to his house. I was to leave exactly ten minutes after he left the house, assuming that my scans showed nothing outside.

I was to drive straight to the address that he gave me in Shreveport, use the code he gave me to get in, lock the doors and wait. He would be there as soon as he could.

When I climbed up from the cubby it was eight minutes since he had left with Bill. I listened outside, stretching out as far as I could to see if anyone was waiting for me when I opened the door. While I knew Bill was a tricky son of a bitch I didn't expect there to be anyone out there right now. Soon, maybe, but not right now.

Sensing nothing I grabbed a few things from my room and headed out to my car. Forty-five very long, very boring minutes later, I pulled into Eric's driveway. I sat there for a minute and thought, yeah, I wouldn't have imagined this, but it suits him.

The drive way was circular, and the house was two, or more likely three story brick. When I got inside I found that it was actually four stories with a floor beneath the basement. Recalling the slight rise of the street on the way up to this cul-de-sac I realized my clever man had bought a plot on a tall hill and buried most of his house in that hill.

It would have been a trick to find land that rose high enough above the water table to do that, but when you had forever to house hunt, you could eventually find what you wanted.

After traipsing through his house, I looked at my watch, he had been gone from me for three hours.

Felt like three years.

I sighed and looked around for something to keep me occupied. I had resigned myself to watching television when I noticed a sketch book on his coffee table. Curious I picked it up and flipped through it quickly. As my brain caught up with what my eyes had seen I took a deep breath, settled back on the couch, turned on the nearest lamp, and opened the book to the first page.

It was a drawing of me. The night we met. His view of me from the throne where was he seated, me in front of him. I have never ever actually been as beautiful as I was in that picture. In my face I can see confidence and shyness, bravery and fear, and just a glint of hellfire in my eyes.

"_Not really…"_

The next page was me sitting a table in Fangtasia. I could see my lips curled into a near smile and I could hear my words echoing distant, _"I'll make you a deal…"_

Me leaning at a table in Fangtasia, "_Why do I get the feeling you're blowing me off…"_

Me against the wall of porch, _"Mr. Northman, won't you please come in…_

Me on my steps_, "If I get in trouble, you'll feel me, right…"_

Me in his office_, "What do you mean you won't be around much longer…"_

Me looking up at him just before he and Russell fed from me. I knew that because this time he included his hand when he had caressed my face. I looked so angry in that one, so hurt.

Me looking down at him with something akin to stubbornness and love in my eyes. I knew that this was when I brought him in from the sun. I remembered what I had felt in that moment and he had captured me and it perfectly.

He was an incredible artist and each moment of my life that he captured was haunting and breathtaking in its accuracy and life like portrayal. A fact that was driven home like a stake to my heart when I saw myself in my doorway, face twisted in anguish the night he had told me about Bill.

_ "__I am truly sorry to see you suffer this way... _

I was glad he had told me. I was grateful. I stopped and wiped a tear from my cheek and realized that I had never told him that.

Perhaps I had just thought he knew. That wasn't fair. I was the telepath, not him. Resolving to tell him that I appreciated his honesty now as I should have that night I turned the page and saw my house. Not the way it is now, but the way it had been after the maenad moved in and fucked it all up.

When I turned the page it was of the same room, but restored and looking exactly like it did now. There was even a sketch of my car sitting in my drive way, waiting for me to come out and drive it away. One of Merlotte's, complete with people inside! The detail was incredible.

He had haunted my life. Looked for me in all the places that I used to be, even in the memories of his mind. I was crying full force now, my little heart aching and breaking for me and for him and for all the time we had lost.

My phone buzzed.

**You're breaking my heart. I can feel your sadness. What's wrong?**

**I miss you. When will you be here?**

**Soon.**

**Good.**

Next was me from behind, naked.

_"__Such a strange sensation when the reality matches what you've pictured in your mind so precisely…"_

I took a deep breath and turned the page to see myself that night in Fangtasia. He had chosen the moment I stood in the crowd of his patrons, my hand extended, daring him, to come to me. Daring him to show the same bravery he demanded of me.

_BE MINE._

There was no middle ground. I was awestruck. At each image I had thought I couldn't possibly have been that pretty, and then that somehow he managed to make me even more beautiful in the next.

It was then I realized that I was only so beautiful because I was reflecting the man who had been standing in front of me for each of those frozen moments.

These weren't drawings, they were mirrors, and they showed not a Sookie, but a Sookie bathed in at first the beauty and then eventually the love of the man who had stood before her in each of these moments captured in the pages of his mind.

The last and the best one showed me from the side, the way he saw me the night he came to put the rocket together and I sat on his lap while we talked about us, without talking about us.

I wished I had his talent and that I could show him the images that lived in my mind from our time together. I wished it with all my heart and I gasped when I felt my hand light up. Not thinking I placed it on the next blank page and saw him in my mind on his throne the night we met when he turned his head to look at me. The image appeared there in a style that was different from his, but just as accurate in its own way.

I saw him when I slapped his face and immediately wanted to kiss it better.

I saw him when he swept into the basement and saw Godric beside me.

When he leaned down and asked me to trust him.

When he let me take his hand on the roof, tears on his face.

His face above me from the dream where I comforted him and touched his fangs for the first time. The tender ecstasy on his face at my touch brought fresh tears to my eyes.

His face when he told me I was going to invite him in to have passionate primal sex with me. The devilish glint in his beautiful eyes made me smile and shake my head at this marvelous creature who magically appeared on the paper before me.

The stunned look on his face after our first kiss.

The face of desire that hovered above as we danced the night I claimed him.

The look of wonder on his face the night I made him name the stars.

I love you, Eric, I thought as I touched that image of his beautiful face, tracing the lines with my fingers as tears slid down my face.

My phone buzzed again.

**OMW. Need anything?**

**You. I need you. Hurry, please.**

I put the book back where I found it and made my way to his room. I wanted to surprise him when he came home.

I wanted to make a new memory of his beautiful face that I could add to the book of us.


	10. So Into You

**_You. I need you. Hurry, please._**

_I put the book back where I found it and made my way to his room. I wanted to surprise him when he came home. _

_I wanted to make a new memory of his beautiful face that I could add to the book of us._

_32XXXXXXXXXXXX23_

watch?v=QyIZ3pYKOQM

**Orbit/So Into You**

EPOV

From the moment I left Sookie Bill made it his number one goal to provoke me into saying something rash and foolish that would either lead to dragging this farce out further or to some kind of punishment for mouthing off to my king.

"Now, Eric, you know I value your input and rely on your guidance when it comes to dealing with the humans. Not only has your commercial been a huge success in increasing profits in vampire run businesses in our area, but your recent photo on the Fangtasia site has made us seem more humane and affable."

_I think the word you are looking for Bill is laughable, but as Sookie would say, whatever_. I was working too hard to not roll my eyes to risk opening my mouth as he droned on.

"Nan will be in attendance at the Festival of Tolerance and in order to make a favorable impression with The Authority this must come off without a hitch."

Blah blah blah. I felt Sookie moving away and a little part of me relaxed to know that she was safely on her way to my house in Shreveport. That gave me some breathing room in managing my temper. I turned my best smile to Bill. "Of course, Majesty. As ever, I am at your service."

The fact that he mentioned the website removed any lingering doubt I had about his get up. He was wearing a more stylish version of the clothes that Sookie had asked me to wear on date night.

Did he think that would make her more attracted to him? If so, he was further gone that I had thought. In fact, given her reaction to him tonight I would label his efforts as an epic fail.

I nearly snorted thinking of a sad picture of him in our doorway tonight captioned thusly and posted on ICANHASSOOKIE like the sad cats that Pam was always making me look at on the cheeseburger site. I never appreciated those images until now.

As if thinking of her pulled her from thin air, my progeny arrived at just that moment. "Your Majesty," she greeted Bill. "Master," she bowed to me. A subtle snub since she had not shown that deference to his vampireship.

_Perhaps I would end her punishment for the website early._

"I see has a lurker," she said smartly, eyeing Bill from head to toe and clearly enjoying the power of her influence on World Wide Web.

_Perhaps I was hasty in thinking of ending her punishment so soon. _

I was really enjoying watching her go from table to table each night and take drink orders dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, especially the part when she had to tell each and every patron that she took an order from that there was no place like home. It was meant to remind her to be grateful and show respect to her Dear Uncle Eric.

_I was pretty sure it wasn't working._

"I knew that picture would bring the business back in droves!" she said.

_Now I was sure it wasn't working._

"Excellent work, Pam!" Bill said, I could hear the cash register in his mind ringing up patrons and practically feel his hand in my pocket. The bastard didn't even have the decency to give a playful rub to my cock as he robbed me.

"Yes, Pamela, excellent work to raise such high praise from our king. I know what his opinion means to you." Fuck her, two could play this game. She actually pouted for a second before she remembered she was standing in front of the king whose opinion she truly could give a fuck less about.

Bill, wrapped up in himself as always missed the byplay between us. "Take a seat, Pam. Let's get down to it!"

_Yes_, not able to suppress the eye roll this time, _let's get the fuck down to it._

Several miserable boring hours later I felt a wave of crushing sadness from Sookie that would have brought me to my knees had I been standing. Immediately texting her to see if she was all right she came back and asked when I would be there with her. She said that she was missing me. I believed her, but suspected that it must be more than that to make her feel this way. I would have pursued it further but the king asked if he was boring me.

_Yes_! I wanted to scream, instead I told her soon and put my phone away, trying to care about this bullshit. Pam seemed to be genuinely into it. I could feel her excitement as they talked of decorations and seating arrangements. I watched her amused as she talked about pattern swatches and the like.

My progeny was truly impressive, even in her evil machinations to circumnavigate my command. I sent my affection to her through our bond and saw her preen as she felt it pass through her.

That brought my mind back to Sookie again. I had started a bond with her tonight_. I need to explain that to her, make sure she understood what would happen if we shared blood twice more. _

_Hell, I needed to make sure I understood what would happen_.

I would be tying myself to an unending bundle of trouble. Currently being pursued by all the fairies in Fae and my own king, who would no doubt do everything he could to get me out of the picture as fast as possible. I had been considering his connection with Claudine and wondered if he had any other connections with Fae that could cause us trouble?

I had to assume that he did, and prepare as best I could.

Was I really ready to sign up for _another_ sixty or seventy years of this?

Fuck, was I really ready sign up for _only_ another sixty or seventy years of this? She was mortal. She would leave me all too soon.

Things, wonderful things, had been happening so fast between us that I had not allowed myself to consider that this union came with an expiration date already on the package. I felt a sharp pain in my chest at the thought of not seeing her devilish smile again.

_Northman, you're like a dog chasing a car. You've been so focused_ on _catching it that you never considered what you would do with it when you did._

"That'll be all for this evening," Bill said standing to dismiss us. Both of us bowed before leaving. We stopped on the porch outside for a moment, I took my phone out to text Sookie and see if I needed to pick up anything at the house for her before heading to Shreveport. My heart clenched when I saw her reply.

**You. I need you. Hurry, please.**

"I won't be in tonight, Pamela," I told her before taking to the sky.

PPOV

I felt that strong reaction to whatever Sookie said to him, and lingered a moment considering that Eric and she might truly be in love after all.

"Well, ain't that the cats pajamas," I said aloud a slight smile on my face as I thought of all the fantastic ways I could torture my maker with this turn of events. I shivered in pure delight and then too took to the sky headed to Fangtasia.

SPOV

As I undressed my mind went back the beautiful drawings that Eric had made of me in his book. Despite my wish and the ones I had added I felt as though I had not done him justice at all.

He is at moments and angles so beautiful that he takes my breath away. If I had any gift at poetry I could write reams about his neck alone. How it makes me weak with the need to touch it, and kiss it.

I had to smile knowing what he would think to know that I held such fancy for his neck.

I snorted then sure that he would think my odes were better spent on other parts of his anatomy.

I was picturing him very clearly in my mind, his beauty, his grace, his form and a thought flitted through my mind.

I wish I were beautiful like that. I wish I was beautiful like him.

EPOV

I was flying as fast as I could but I could not out run my thoughts from earlier. Bonds, dying, trouble. It was all too much. I had no idea what do with any of it, and as Shreveport came closer, as Sookie came closer, I felt my sense of panic and uncertainty increase.

My mind was in complete turmoil. Screaming in rage I shoved it all away, refusing to let it take this happiness that I found so recently in her arms.

As my house came into sight I felt anguish overcome me and a random thought passed through my mind.

I wish…I wish that she would live forever, and that we could work this out together.

I wish that she was more like me.

SPOV

I wish I was beautiful like him…

As soon as I thought it I felt something happen. A fire moved over me like what I had felt my hands do earlier when I wished that I could show him how I saw him. I screamed, not because it hurt but in fear of not knowing what was happening.

I fell to the floor, still screaming, seeing myself covered in light, my body tingling all over. I closed my eyes and called to Eric, needing him there with me.

EPOV

I felt her fear and heard her scream, rather than stopping to use the key I burst through the door and flew up the stairs, following our tie to where she was.

I came to a dead stop when I saw what had frightened her so.

SPOV

I was rising from the floor when Eric came into the room. My head was swimming and it seemed like there was so much more of me to get up than there had been just moments before. When I stood, the room seemed so much smaller, and the floor seemed so much further away.

I looked down, and down, and down at the floor and saw Eric's feet at the end of my legs. No, make that Eric's feet at the end of Eric's legs. My head snapped up and looked at him frozen in the doorway.

"Eric?" I tried to call out, but something was wrong with my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Eric?" I sounded like him!

"Sookie?" he looked mortified, but he took a step toward me, his hand coming out.

"Yes, it's me," I assured him in my strange voice.

"Oh, Sookie, what happened?" I frowned and shook my head not understanding. He moved slowly toward me and for once, he didn't seem to tower over me. In fact we were standing eye to eye.

What the fuck?

Gently, he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to walk toward the full length mirror he had in the corner of his bedroom.

I saw Eric reflected there, naked. And then I saw Eric reflected there wearing the clothes he had on when he came in a moment ago. I raised my hand slowly, and saw naked Eric do the same. When I touched my face, naked Eric touched his.

"This can't be good," naked Eric said, his eyes large and confused as he stared at himself in the mirror. The problem was that I had said it.

I was naked Eric.


	11. Pretty

_"__This can't be good," naked Eric said, his eyes large and confused as he stared at himself in the mirror. The problem was that I had said it._

_I was naked Eric._

32XXXXXXXXXXXX23

**Orbit/Pretty**

EPOV

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. This was, to say the least, an unexpected turn of events. "Eric?" she said, sounding scared and uncertain. I put my arm around her shoulders and stood closer. We would get through this tog-

Were her biceps larger than mine?

I turned her to face me and looked her over carefully starting with her head.

Her hair was fuller, thicker than mine.

Her eyes bluer, and her lips looked fuller and just kissed.

Her shoulders were broader, her chest had better definition, her legs better tone and leaning down for a unnecessarily close inspection I carefully noted that-

"Sookie! Your cock is bigger than mine!"

"What?" she looked down quickly and realized for the first time that she had gone The Full Eric. "Oh, Lord!" she screeched her hand coming up to cover herself, but a second later the look of embarrassed fear was replaced by wonder.

"Oooooh!" she said softly her hand starting to do more than offer camouflage for her significantly improved beta model of Eric I.

"Th-that feels aaaaaammmazzzing!"

Her hand was moving faster now, her eyes fluttering shut as she pleasured herself. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration and growled.

There was only one conclusion to draw from this…one ineffable thought in my mind… echoing over and over…haunting me…

SHE WAS PRETTIER THAN ME!

SPOV

Oh…my….God! How could he ever not being doing this? It felt so fucking good! Oh, how much better would it be if I had some kind of lubricant? I stopped tugging on my new body and looked around.

"Eric?" I asked my voice all dark and filled with sex like his was when he was ready to take me. This must be what he feels like just before he slides into my slick…tight…hot…

"ARGH!" My strangled cry filled the room just as I came all over Eric standing next to me. The image of me from the other side of how this usually worked had proven too much for this new body's sense of self control. I was about to apologize when suddenly I felt quite dizzy and had to sit down on the floor.

"S-sorry, Eric," I panted out, my hand on his leg to get his attention.

"You should be!" he huffed.

"It washes out! Trust me I would know," I huffed back.

"What are you-" He glanced down at his not so black jeans and realized what I was talking about. "Oh, its fine, Sookie." He sat down heavily on the floor beside me. I reached for his hand and for once, his didn't swallow mine.

This was all so strange.

And being this close to him, smelling the wonderful smell that was just Eric, I could feel myself getting hard again.

With the slightest little thing turning me on I wondered again, in a totally different way, how could he ever not be doing this?

EPOV

She was perfect. So much better than me. The only time I ever came close to looking this good was after she had her way with me and my lips were swollen from her kisses. My body pumped and hard from her touch, my eyes focused only on taking her to the next level of pleasure.

I was only beautiful because she made me so.

Needing to be consoled, I shifted on the floor I laid my head in her very large, very masculine lap. Looking up into her eyes, I let myself relax for the first time since Bill had done a balls up on our evening.

Her hand that looked like my hand came up to my face, resting there tenderly and I closed my eyes for a moment and just let myself experience the tenderness of that touch.

Was that what it was like for her? A hand so large but so feather light in touch that all at once you felt protected and cherished with just a simple brush from the back of its fingers?

She started squirming under me, breaking the trance that I allowed to take me as she stroked my cheek. "I need to get up, Eric. Please." I saw it then, her erection that brought mine to shame. At least two inches longer, and about an inch wider in circumference.

I tried not to be hurt, but she was attacking my manhood, literally.

In a thousand years no lover had ever found me inadequate.

"Stay," I said softly, taking her large hand again. "It's ok, Sookie. It's mostly nothing that I haven't seen before. Though," I went on eyeing her body appreciatively, if still a little enviously, "I must admit the angle is entirely new and exciting." I let the S sound play out on my tongue as my barely noticeable accent was sometimes want to do.

"Eric," she sounded heartbroken, and it pulled my gaze immediately from her southern hemisphere to her northern arctic blue gaze. "I don't know how this happened," she confessed, a tear slipping down her cheek.

"I know you were upset earlier, I could feel you. Can you tell me what happened?" She nodded, wiping a tear before it fell down her face.

"Come on," she said rising. "I'll show you."

"Wait, Sookie." I stepped into my closet and pulled out a robe for her.

"Thanks," she said, stepping into it, and then taking my hand to lead me back downstairs. She stopped when she saw the door splintered and on the floor. I picked up and set it in the doorway, and mumbled about calling a repair man tomorrow.

When she took me to the living room and picked up the sketch book on the table I groaned inside. I had totally forgotten that I left that out when I sent her here tonight!

Fucking Bill and his fucking, fucking up my fucking evening!

"You weren't supposed to see that," I said, taking a seat and now pulling her down beside me, before nudging her head into my lap, the way I had been in hers upstairs. Her long legs hung over the edge of the sofa.

I ran my hand through her thicker hair, and then down the side of her face gently, attempting to soothe her for a moment before pressing her to tell me what had started us down this road of bigger and improved cocks and perpetually kissed man lips of sexiness.

"You made me so beautiful, Eric…no, that is not where I want to start." She took a breath then and pursed my lips together on her face, for a split second I wanted to kiss myself very badly.

What would that be like?

"Thank you for telling me about Bill and the Queen. I'm sorry for taking my anger out on you that night."

Ah, I see. Her pain had been deep and consuming when Compton crawled away. I knew that because I had felt it with her.

"So, it was thinking of that night that made you so sad?" She nodded, wiping another tear before it fell.

"I am grateful to you, even if I didn't act it at the time. When I saw your book and how beautiful you made me, even in that terrible moment I remembered that in all that had happened since my return from Fae that I had not apologized to you." I looked down at the book in my hands in wonder that such a small thing could bring her such pain.

At that moment the pages fell open and I saw myself…no…looking closer, I saw the version of myself that was sitting beside me with his head in my lap.

The one with the perfect pouty lips, and the enhanced man features that were no doubt hidden beneath his clothes. "Who is this Sookie?"

I down into my own blue eyes and saw her brows furrow. "That's you, Eric. I added you the way I see you to the book of us."

I looked again from the picture to her and saw the same lustrous hair, and well defined muscles. If there were any naked shots of me in here-

HELLO!

There I was naming the stars and from the size of me in her hand, I would say she got the proportions just about right for what she was now packing.

It was then I really heard what she said.

_I added you the way I see you to the book of us._

This new and improved version of me was not a critique at all.

It was an homage!

It was how _she_ saw _me_!

I felt my wounded ego right itself, and start to strut around.

_That's right fuckers! My woman thinks I am that fucking pretty!_

Feeling elated I looked at how good looking I was, again.

There was much to admire. Once we got this shit fixed I was NEVER going to let her hear the end of how fucking pretty she thought I was. If my ego was rubbing its imaginary hands together in gleeful anticipation of how that was going to go.

But how did she become me?

I flipped through the rest of her pictures feeling my chest squeeze tighter and my ego grow larger as I saw each new image from her mind's eye. I was fast, and it had taken me months to do my drawings. She had done near as many in the space of a few hours.

"How did you do these, Sookie?"

"Magic, I guess." I looked up at her sharply.

"Come again?"

"Jeez, I probably could. I can't seem to control this thing at all!" Immensely amused, and completely empathetic I still elected to ignore that comment in favor of staying on topic.

We could discuss philosophy of where the male brain truly existed later.

In depth.

If I was lucky.

"What kind of magic?" I asked, shifting subtly under her weight where she still rested in my lap. In my lap so close to –

"Fae magic, I guess." Did my bottom lip come out like that when I was pouting? Did it look as kissable as this one –

_It does to her!_ My ego sang out loudly while rummaging around in the closet of my mind for its tap shoes.

"You've been doing a lot of magic lately, haven't you?" I asked her softly, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

"Maybe," she mumbled, now fiddling with her robe, pulling it closer around her neck, and wriggling in a way that left me…distracted.

"No maybe about it. First my clothes go poof, and then the girls at the SBAS and now this."

"No," she said, eyes downcast. "Your clothes weren't the first time."

"Oh, when was the first time?" Her eyes closed then and she sighed outwardly, clearly not wanting to talk about this.

"It happened with the maenad, and with Russell once and then in Fae. I…when I first got there, everything was so beautiful and pretty and it just seemed like, well, Heaven. You know?" Her eyes cut up to mine and I tried to send her encouragement to go on. "So, I don't know how or why but it just felt…wrong to me. Like, a trick or a trap or something and the more I thought about it, it kind started to crack open and let the truth spill through."

"What truth was that?" I was smoothing her hair back now in a calming pattern watching a full gambit of emotions run across her face as she pressed herself harder to go on.

"That it wasn't Heaven at all, it was a lie. I could see Mab's true face, Eric. She appeared beautiful, but then for a split second I could see what was beneath that illusion was anything but beautiful."

"And no one else could see?"

"Not at first, but, then, when I wouldn't eat the fruit I told you about before, she came at me and I shot her with light from my hands."

"You attacked the Queen of Fae, and not only pierced her illusion that held dozens of minds captive, but completely destroyed it with your magic." She nodded then, looking up at me, fear very evident in her gaze.

"Yup."

She was twenty-six years old.

What she knew at this moment of the supernatural world I could have put in the palm of my hand and still had room to park a 747 beside it.

Despite that lack of experience and knowledge she had now played a role in toppling three supernatural monarchies, caught the interest of a shifter, a werewolf, and a cadre of vampires, myself included.

Would I ever be enough for her once she figured out how amazing and unique she truly was?

_Hey! What the fuck?_ My ego yelled at me. I tried to calm him. I was still cool, I had the book to prove it.

"It's been happening since I got back from doing whatever I did there. I'm not trying, it's just…happening."

"Can you tell me what you were thinking when you turned into me?" She closed my eyes and scrunched her face up, blowing out a breath.

"Um…I was thinking that I wished I was as beautiful as you are. That I wish I was like you." I froze.

"When?" My voice was barely just above a whisper. I had wished for something, too, and I was suddenly very afraid I had more to do with this than I had realized.

"Just before you got here. I was scared when it started happening…"

"I felt you."

Fuck! Fuck!

"Sookie, I was maybe wishing at the same time." Her eyes snapped open.

"What were you wishin' for?"

"I was thinking of us tonight, and I maybe kind of sort of wished that you were more like me, too." I hunched my shoulders waiting for her to explode.

"More like you, how?" She didn't sound angry, and when I checked the tie, she didn't feel angry either. I relaxed my shoulders and sat back.

"I thought tonight for the first time that I would lose you someday and it…it made me feel disturbingly…human."

"Scared, you mean, Eric?"

"Yeah, maybe, something like that. Sure."

"Lose me how?"

"You're mortal, Sookie." I stopped there hoping she would fill in the rest and not make me say it!

"Says the thousand year old vampire to his fairy hybrid doppelganger in his lap."

She had a point. She didn't know what she was, yet. What made me think I did?

_That would be ME!_ My ego yelled out from the back of mind. I sighed. Arrogant little fucker!

"The other times, did you wish then, too?"

"I think so, yes. I don't remember stripping your clothes and sending them to Never Land, but I think it more than likely that I would want you naked when I was waiting in bed for you to come home."

Home. That still made me tingle.

"And those girls, I just wished they would leave us alone so we could enjoy our date."

"And they did." She nodded. I recalled something I had read in her absence as I searched for her.

"The book you were holding when I came home that night, the one about Fae, it said something about Fae magic and how it was in reality much like it was in fairy tales of old." I rubbed her head again, soothing her.

"Like how?"

"Well, most of it is all about wishes and your heart's desire given action and form."

"Like the kiss that woke Snow White?"

"Something like that."

"So, if we kiss now, do you think that this will go away?"

"Well, I think that depends."

"On what?"

"That it is our hearts true desire to have you change back." She looked at me sharply.

"You mean you aren't sure you want me to change back?"

"Of course I do, Sookie! Of course I do. Just…maybe not right away."

"WHAT?" she sat up then, and put her face in mine. "What are you talking about, Eric Northman?"

What was I talking about?

"You made me really pretty, Sookie." She blinked. "You have these incredible kissable lips, and you have a body that makes me want to do sinful things that leave me confused and hard at the same time." She blinked again, and shifted beside me.

I knew why, I wanted to shift in my seat, too.

"I didn't make you pretty, Eric. This is how I see you." I shivered at the depth of how she loved me.

"Before we try to change you back, I think I would like to see me as you do?"

"Oh," she said, her tone getting deeper, like mine did when she said something to me that made me crazy to take her. "But does that mean that you like you better than you do me?"

"No, not at all, dearest," I said leaning in for kiss of those perfect lips. "It means that I like me just as much as I do you."

"Oh, really?" she asked her hand locating my Big Dipper with unerring accuracy. This time I could reciprocate. She moaned so perfectly when I wrapped my hand around her I lost my mind and pulled her into that kiss I had been thinking about forever now.

I had no idea my lips were so soft.

I moved to her neck, now long and graceful like my own, but still smelling like Sookie. So, sweet like Sookie. Gods, my neck was fabulous! I could kiss it for hours and not cover the span of it. Did she appreciate my neck as she did the rest of me?

I rubbed my stubbly cheek against hers and felt her hands working my jeans. This truly was a night for wishes to come true, I thought when I felt her hot breath fall across my hips.

Oh, my Sookie! What delights I can show you. A hairs breadth away from sending me into heavens waiting arms she pulled back from me and looked up.

"So, later, Eric, can we wish that you were more like me?" My mind traveling to where she was I felt my shaft jerk in her hand. The chance to feel her like that was mind bending.

"Yes!" Like she thought I would say no? Was she crazy? Did she think I was crazy? She was supposed to be me right now. "Come here, Sookie, let me show you what do with what you have in your hand."

"Are you implying I don't already know?" she sassed me.

"You are an artist, Sookie, have no doubt, but I can make you a master." I leaned in and whispered into her ear and moment later she sat back her eyes large and dripping sex.

"You can really do that?"

"Twice on Sundays," I assured her, turning her to stretch out beneath me on the sofa.

"Oh, please let it be Sunday," she moaned.

"Pray for me, Sookie."

"Someone sure needs to," she groaned out as I put word to action.

"You're the prettiest man I've ever seen," I told her before I surrendered my ability to speak to higher purpose.

"That's just 'cause I look like yooooooooooou," was the last thing she managed to say.

_Damn straight!_ My ego yelled, tying up his tap shoes and getting ready to dance like he had never danced before.


	12. Yosemite Sam & His Dragon

Previously on Orbit:

_"__Come here, Sookie, let me show you what do with what you have in your hand."_

_"__Are you implying I don't already know?" she sassed me._

_"__You are an artist, Sookie, have no doubt, but I can make you a master." I leaned in and whispered into her ear and moment later she sat back her eyes large and dripping sex._

_"__You can really do that?"_

_"__Twice on Sundays," I assured her, turning her to stretch out beneath me on the sofa._

_"__Oh, please let it be Sunday," she moaned._

_"__Pray for me, Sookie."_

_"__Someone sure needs to," she groaned out as I put word to action._

_"__You're the prettiest man I've ever seen," I told her before I surrendered my ability to speak to higher purpose._

_"__That's just 'cause I look like yooooooooooou," was the last thing she managed to say._

_Damn straight! My ego yelled, tying up his tap shoes and getting ready to dance like he had never danced before._

**Yosemite Sam And His Dragon**

SPOV

Our night seemed to last forever. What had at first scared me about the change in my appearance became a gift and in the moments I could think anything beyond how much I loved Eric I thought that was only right. He had scared me at first, too, and now he was the gift I had never been smart enough to ask for.

There was no place our bodies that remained untouched, unkissed, unloved. I learned so much about how it felt when I loved him and how it felt for me to love him. The images in my mind were not something I would place in the book of us, they were too private, and too consuming to risk that anyone would find them. We were completely naked to each other in every way. This showed me more than anything else could have how much he trusted me, how much he loved me.

I woke to find my normal form returned to me, our limbs tangled together on the edge of dawn his kisses marking me with mindless affection as his hands cradled me next to him. I felt him slip into his day rest and I snuggled closer falling back to sleep beside him.

When I woke up again he was settling us into his large tub full of bubbles and steaming water. I sighed and cuddled back to him, pulling his arms around me. He resumed kissing me as he had when he fell asleep that morning.

"All the pages of my mind are full of nothing but you now," I said, not thinking of it, just letting it out as soon as it formed in my brain. He chuckled softly and kissed me again.

"You will make new pages in time, Sookie."

"Probably, but I want them to always be full of you and how I feel right now in this moment."

"Me, too." His arms pulled me closer to his body.

"So, let's do it. Let's get the fuck out of here and go make new pages together."

"All right." I turned to face him.

"I'm serious, Eric."

"I know," he said smiling at me. "I can feel it."

"Then pack what you need and let's go tonight."

"If I could leave tonight all I would need is right here in my arms." I melted first in love and then in disappointment.

"But you can't go tonight?"

"I have to see this festival through with Bill first, and I do have to make some arrangements for our travels. Have you decided where you want to go first?"

"Pacoima."

"Even if you insist, I will resist."

"But its fun to say," I whined, not anywhere near serious but having a good time anyway.

"But it's not fun to visit."

"So you pick. I don't care as long as I am with you." I was running my fingers over his arms, spelling out I love you in slow drawly swirls while I thought about what he had said the night before about my magic. There was no one I could trust or ask so I had to figure it out on my own. "Do you have houses with tubs like this anywhere besides here?" I asked absently, my mind floating free like my body.

"Several. I have one in Jamaica, and one in Paris, also in Sweden."

"Anywhere else?" His hands slipped down beneath the water then, interrupting my spelling efforts on his flesh. I was in such a happy silly mood I heard the theme to Jaws hit a few beats in my brain before he found his target. I arched back against him and whispered his name as he started kissing my neck and moving his fingers in that way that made me crazy.

"I want to build a home right here," he whispered his sexy voice in my ear as his fingers slipped into my body making me writhe against him.

"Did you get a permit for that?"

"Do I need one?"

"Ohhhh, yessssss," his movements making me drag out my words as I tried to hold onto giving him a hard time before he gave me one, which was going to be any minute now from the way his arousal was pressing into my back. I could feel my body responding to him and words were growing more and more distant but I refused to give up without a fight. "You have to get permission to take ownership here and build a home. Pay the fees."

"What are the fees?" he asked, his fangs scraping my skin and sending me closer to the edge his fingers were taking me to. My arm came up around the back of his head pulling him down and urging him to bite me while I arched back and felt the head of him line up with my entrance. Slowly, I lowered myself down on him.

"Full access to this at all times," I moaned as I rose up and little and then back down.

"I can work with that," he said as his fangs sank into and I broke apart in his arms, taken with him as any woman could ever be.

EPOV

"No, NO! I told you those chairs go there!" Any minute now that prancing asshole was going to yell about how he was the King of Louisiana and when he said he wanted the chairs someplace they had better get there. I flashed for a moment on Yosemite Sam and his dragon. I could only hope that I would be the one to lower the drawbridge on this tiny tyrant when the time came. I nearly laughed out loud picturing him yelling_, "Close it, close it, close it up again! I am the king of Louisiana, close it up again."_

"Master, you are filled with something dangerously near glee. I assume all is well with you and Sookie?" Pam asked me quietly, but not so quietly that his majesty couldn't help but over hear. She was goading the little tyrant. I saw Bill's normal stick up his ass expression twist a little tighter. I should punish her for that, but really I was enjoying it too much to be too hard on her. Instead I just arched a brow at her and shook my head slightly.

As much fun as it was to fuck with Bill if I were planning to petition to leave in a few days I needed him to be just this side of psychotic. I knew it was a long shot but I wasn't going to press my luck. I might send him post card when we got to wherever we were going but we would be out of here by then and it would hardly matter, much. Once I was free nothing short of the Authority could call me back.

"Sheriff, I expect you to bring Sookie with you to the Festival of Tolerance." _I bet you do, asshole_.

"I will ask her."

"No, you will tell her. She is yours now, correct? You must make her heel to your command."

"A little louder, majesty and even the humans here will know this for the farce it is." The gall, he was peddling tolerance for a race he was insisting I enslave a member of to attend. Fuck him, two can play at this game. I hit record on my phone in my pocket.

"Watch your tone, Sheriff Northman."

"Are you suggesting that I force my bonded to heel and attend this Festival, the very Festival that is called the Festival of Tolerance and is designed to show the human race that we are not a threat to them?"

"_Your BONDED_?"

"Yes, majesty. We have bonded, and as such I have nothing but the utmost respect for her to make her own decisions about her attendance to this festival." We were nearly bonded, so it was almost the truth, and it was the implications of that near truth that I was counting on making this little leech show his true colors.

"I command you to bring her! End of discussion!"

"What possible benefit is there to have my Sookie attend this function?" Oh, I could see the crazy rise a level in his eyes on that one. He really almost made this too easy. There had to be some way I could turn this to my advantage.

"As a nearly human and vampire couple you will be demonstrating the possibilities between our races." NEARLY HUMAN? Did that fucker just out her?

"So you want to parade her in front of the cameras like a pedigreed poodle?" My fangs were down now, an instinctive response when angered to this level.

"No, not at all. I plan to parade you both around like a couple of pedigreed poodles. Nan arrives at 8PM. I expect you and_ your _Sookie to be here to greet her." He pranced away then, which probably saved his life. I was seething everything was red when Pam dumped the proverbial bucket of cold water over my head.

"Why do you suppose Nan wants to meet Sookie?" she asked me in Old Norse. I looked at her sharply, the red receding from the edges of my vision.

This was going to be much more dangerous than I had ever dreamed.

SPOV

It took me less than five minutes to pack and place my suitcase by the door. I took one last look around the old farm house and then I closed the door and headed out to the car. I had my hand on the door handle when I felt a void appear behind me. It wasn't there and then it was. The only vampires I had ever seen move that fast were Godric and Eric. Expecting Eric I turned to find myself facing a female vampire about my height and build.

"You smell like heaven," she said her eyes glazing over and she started toward me taking another lung full of heaven. "And my brother. You are Eric's." It wasn't a question, so I didn't answer her. Eric has a sister? A British sister come to that, from her accent. Still, best to get on with the in-laws whenever possible.

"I am Sookie," I said remembering not to stick my hand out to a strange vampire.

"I have a message for my brother. You will give it to him," she said pressing in and attempting to glamour me. I spent a moment trying to decide if I should tell her or play along. She was Godric's child, and Eric's sister which was about the best recommendation I could think of when it came to a vampire, but still. Eric had impressed upon me to trust no one but him, and since he hadn't said anyone but him OR his sister, I decided to go along with it. Hopefully, if she could be trusted we could laugh over it later.

"A message," I said letting my eyes go unfocused and my tone sound dreamy.

"Nan has been commissioned by the Authority to take you at the Festival of Tolerance. If he gets in the way they will kill him. You will go quietly with them so that he is not harmed." I bristled inside at first their plan to take me and then to hurt my Eric. "Why are they so interested in you?" She asked stepping closer, likely to take a taste for herself and see what the fuss was all about. That was where I drew the line.

My hands lit up and I dropped the fake glamour. "Wouldn't you like to know?" I asked her in a tone as cold as ice. She blinked, her perfect porcelain face a mask of surprise.

"How?" she took a step closer and I blasted her across the yard, moving toward her rather than away, I caught her in a net of light, reveling in her scream that split the night.

"Who told Nan about me?" I asked her feeling the power rushing through me, physically needing to end her with every beat of my heart.

"The King of Louisiana," she screamed. "Please, stop! It hurts!"

"What did he tell them?"

"I don't know! I was not part of that. I came to save my brother because I love him!" I tightened the net on her enjoying her screams.

"I love him, too!" I spat at her, fighting to not kill her.

"Then you will walk away! You will be the True Death to Eric!"

"No!" I turned away then and walked away. I took a deep breath and managed to suppress the desire to end her. Eric would love his sister. Godric would have loved her, too, and she did come here to save him. I dropped the energy net and turned to face her.

"Leave, while you can." She stood with some effort and wiped the blood off her face that had come out of her nose and ears while I had held her in the net.

"If you want to save him, if you truly care for him, you will get as far away from him as you can." My hair and dress blew in the breeze of her departure. When I was sure she was gone I fell to the ground and let the tears come down.

_Did we come so far only to lose each other now, my beloved?_


	13. A Wish

**Orbit/ A Wish**

EPOV

I had been on my way to her when I felt her rage blow through me. I pushed myself to fly faster fearing that Bill's plan to have us there night after next was a ruse and that she was under attack now. Moments before I touched down in her yard I felt her rage fade away to despair. I found her on the ground in front of her farm house tears flowing silently down her cheeks.

I took a breath, looking for intruders and was shocked to find that Nora had been here. If she had hurt Sookie there was no place on the planet that she would be able to hide from me! "Sookie?" I picked her up from the ground and carried her at vampire speed to the porch, sitting on the swing and holding her close. "What happened?"

"Your sister was here." I nodded somewhat impatiently, knowing that part already. "She said that Nan plans to take me at the festival and if you try and stop them they are going to kill you."

"Take you where?" She shrugged.

"Away. Bill told them about me." My fangs came down as my blood boiled. I should have lowered that drawbridge on him already.

"I will not let that happen!" I reassured her, my mind spinning. I needed to talk to Nora. I needed to know what they knew. Why did they want her? And how did that get Bill what he wanted? It doesn't, it just makes sure that if he can't have her I can't either. Bastard. Perhaps he had some long term plan to get her back, play the hero, save the day. I knew one thing for certain, his plan was to have me die no matter if I resisted her abduction or not. He knew I would never let her go. That I would never give up.

"I can't let you risk yourself for me, Eric. It was what I was worried about at the beginning of all this. I was afraid that someone would hurt you to get to me. I thought it would be the Fae, but it seems that Bill plans better and moves faster. I should go." My arms tightened around her, refusing to let her rise.

"We can figure this out together, Sookie. We can if you stay and fight with me!"

She shook her head. "No, if it were only me I would fight them! I would kill them one by one until they were all dead or I was and I wouldn't think twice!" she said fiercely. "But I can't let anything happen to you, especially not because of me." I surprised her by kissing her forehead and holding her close. I knew exactly how she felt because those same thoughts had gone through my mind just before I handcuffed myself to Russell and sat down at the sunshine buffet. Nothing was too much to risk, except her.

How could I fight her on something that I myself understood so well? "Let's think about this," I said racing to find something that we had in our arsenal that could do what we needed in this delicate dangerous situation. "If you leave, Bill will kill me anyway, and he will turn the world upside down to find you. With all the power of The Authority at his fingertips there would be no place you could hide, Sookie. We have to find a way to take him out of play permanently and convince The Authority to no longer be interested in you."

"That would take a freaking miracle," she said sounding hopeless. Hope bloomed inside me and I felt a slow smile spread over my face.

"Or a wish," I kissed her hair and laid it out for her.

32XXXXXXXXXXX23

_Two nights later…_

SPOV

"Ready?" Eric asked me from the doorway of his bedroom. I caught his reflection in the mirror and turned to get a better look at him in his grey suit and black button down shirt. He looked good enough to eat, and I would have if there were any room left. Butterflies the size of elephants were currently stamping around in my guts. "You got this," he said to me, opening his arms to me. A hug would go a long way to calming me, and he knew that. He always knew what I needed.

"Pam's ready?" I asked snuggling him for what could be the last time.

"Pam is ecstatic. She has lists and plans that will take centuries to execute." I pulled back and nodded to him, taking one long last look at him. Flashes of our first night in Fangtasia came back to me, his face when I had danced before his throne, and then on his leg. When he took me against the wall and when he named the stars in my yard. Our date pretending to be college students at the SBAS, our intense night when I had changed into him. So many and so much, we had lived a life in just the small time we had had together. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. "Shhh," he comforted me. "We will have many more nights together, Miss Stackhouse. Nights to explore the stars and achieve orbit in each other's arms. Bill nor The Authority will win this night from us." I bit my lip, using the pain to focus on.

He was right. If I didn't get my shit together we would have lost before we even started. We were silent on the drive over to the community center where the festival was set to take place. His fingers where threaded through mine and I let myself enjoy the simple pleasure of feeling his cool skin on mine as though this were just another date that I had thought up for us. Some ridiculous event to see if he cared enough to play along or to amuse him even at my expense. When he shut the motor off I turned to him, my hand going up to touch his face.

"I love you, Eric Northman. It's a forever kind of thing, and I thought I should let you know." He captured my hand and kissed my palm.

"And I love you, Sookie Stackhouse. It's a forever kind of thing for me as well."

EPOV

When we entered the auditorium Bill greeted us immediately. It was 7:45, which gave us time to get acclimated before Nan arrived. "Sookie, how lovely to see you," he slithered up to her looking like a vampire who ate the canary. I hope he choked on it. She nodded, took a deep breath and started the show.

"Bill, I would like a few minutes alone with you to…talk about some things."

"Sookie," I growled over her shoulder. "I forbid you to be alone with him."

"You have no right to forbid me anything!"

"I have every right, you are my bonded!"

"I don't even know what that means!" she said, whisper shouting, which was the very definition of pointless in a room of vampires. Bill had watched our exchange with some interest.

"Sookie, I will be happy to talk to you, but later, all right? I am the host tonight after all, but I promise to make time for you before you leave tonight." She smiled at him faintly, and let it go at that. It was what we had expected.

"Of course, Bill. Thank you for your time." By the time he got to her curiosity should have him pretty well spun up and distracted if we were lucky.

Nan arrived at 8:00 like the queen herself, smiling and waving at the cameras that greeted her. She even signed a couple of autographs before entering the auditorium. I had been standing next to Sookie but maintaining my distance to reinforce the disquiet that we had acted out for Bill upon our arrival. When Nan's flat cold reptilian eyes landed on Sookie I felt exactly as I had in that hotel room Dallas, disturbed.

Yes, she had stood up to her for Godric, but that was because she had felt it was the right thing to do. Standing up to her had been both reckless and awe inspiring to me. Sookie had no idea what she was risking that night, but I had come to believe that even had she known, she would have done exactly the same thing.

"Why, Miss Stackhouse, a pleasure to see you again," she said out loud. _All the better to eat you my dear,_ I heard in my head, and prayed that I wasn't suddenly able to telepathically hear vampires. She nodded to her and smiled slightly. "Before the end of tonight I would like to talk to you for a few minutes." Sookie's eyes flashed to Bill's and he shook his head at her slightly. This was not his idea. But of course it was, from beginning to end this was Bill's plan of revenge on me.

"Of course. Anything I can do to be of service to you and the king." She arched and eyebrow at Sookie and then looked like she had swallowed a bug. So, everything was normal there. Pam came over then and Sookie made a fuss about all her efforts for the festival. I had told her that most of it had been her ideas and I had to say it looked better than anything that Bill could have come up with on his own.

The evening dragged on forever. Finally, Nan was speaking and I saw Bill motion for Sookie to join him backstage. She moved quickly, not knowing how long she would have. Mere moments later I heard Sookie calling for me, her voice filled with terror. I vamped to her side.

"Sookie?" I asked looking at Bill questioning. Bill nodded slightly and then launched into a tirade worthy of tiny despot.

"I demand that you let her go at once, Sherriff!"

"She is mine!" I declared.

"We shall see," Bill stomped off and returned to the stage just as Nan finished her closing remarks. Sookie and joined them back out front in time for me to overhear Bill and Nan's conversation under the clapping of those present.

"Let's get this done, I want the fairy loaded and on her way to the Authority within the hour." She took a breath then and looked at me oddly. "You smell of her," Nan accused.

"She had asked to see me about a personal matter."

"The agreement was that you could have her AFTER The Authority was done."

"Of course. I merely wanted to make sure she was not planning anything untoward for the evening." Nan rolled her eyes but didn't press further on the subject. Bill needed to press further. "Nan, I think it might be better for Sookie to stay with me, after all. I know her better than anyone else and any information she has is more likely to be shared with me than anyone else." Before Nan could speak Sookie and I came over to say their good night. Nan held up her hand reminding us to linger for some vampire business until after the humans has departed.

I nodded his head gracefully, my face a mask of cold calculation. From the corners of my eyes I saw Nan's Storm troopers enter the room, blocking the exit. "We will be taking the fairy with us," Nan said coldly, looking at me. My fangs came down as Sookie started to scream and clutch at me.

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to quiet her.

"Your King has alerted us to potential advantages in her blood. We want to study it and her. Possibly synthesize a version of True Blood based on what we find. You will release her to us, or we will kill you and take her anyway." The storm troopers moved in as she spoke and Sookie started to flip out.

I saw Pam coming up alongside us. I looked around and then down at Sookie. I soothed her, whispering how she would be fine, and that I would see her soon, but she could tell I was lying and started to flip out all the more. "You said you loved me, Eric! ERIC DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME! PLEASE!" Then I stepped back, looked at Nan and said the only thing I could say that would keep up both alive.

"I surrender to the will of The One True Authority."

"NO!" Bill shouted, pulling a stake out of his pocket and moving toward Nan, "SOOKIE IS MINE!" Pam stepped in and staked Bill. Nan's eyes were round and shocked when Pam looked at her with concern and asked if she were ok.

Pam was made the Queen of Louisiana. Sookie was hauled off to the Authority her cries and curses of my betrayal filling the night, but I was left alive. I immediately petitioned the Queen for permission to leave my post and travel for an indeterminate time. My request was approved and I left Shreveport that night, alone, destination unknown.


	14. Super Glue

**Orbit/Super Glue**

EPOV

I was sitting in booth at **_Sangue_**, _the _vampire club in Rio de Janeiro, sipping a True Blood a week later when I saw her for the first time. She was dressed in almost nothing, her deep olive skin standing out in contrast to the white string bikini she was wearing. Her voluptuous breasts threatening to escape the confines of her tiny top as she twirled and jiggled her hips in time with the drum heavy music. Her hair was short, straight and ink black, the blue highlights catching the club strobe lights as she danced.

I wanted to go to her immediately, but stopped myself, thinking instead of how excellent it would be to feed on something other than True Blood and to feel a woman's body beneath me and around me. I swore to myself then and there that this woman would be mine before the sun rose.

After watching her for a while longer, I rose from my booth and moved toward her on the crowded floor. She had a partner, then I was her partner. He tried to argue, to start a fight over me cutting in. I glamoured him away, and then turned my attention to her, placing my hands possessively on her hips and pulling them to mine before letting my hands run down to cup her barely covered ass. Her turquoise blue eyes looked into mine, a sliver of humor there are she matched her movements to mine, and rubbed herself against me, making me even harder than she had when I watching her from the booth.

She put her arms around my neck, crossing her wrists behind my head, leaning into me she asked above the music, "So, you would be my lover then?"

"Yes," I looked into her eyes thinking how easy it should be to glamour her, but I had lost my taste for that with my last lover.

"I am not sure that I am interested," she said in heavily accented English, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a dismissive gesture. I glanced down taking in her hard nipples that made her lips liars. "My last lover, was…irreplaceable," she said, as she stared at me, daring me to contradict her, or to claim that I could be as good or better.

"Mine as well," I told her, holding her gaze, daring her to go on, to take this to the next level. "Dance with me as you danced with him," I said to her, my hand ghosting over her breast, grazing her nipple while I breathed into her ear, shifting her body to put my leg in between hers. I thought she might pull back, shove me away for being so presumptuous but as soon as I saw that spark of challenge in her sea colored eyes I knew that I had met my match.

I saw her smirk widen when, as if by magic **_Attitude_** by_ Hardknox _started to pound through the speakers. I saw the DJ stop and look around confused and threw my head back genuine laughter that was knocked right out of me when I felt her legs flex around my thigh, the moisture from her body seeping through the cloth on my leg as she ground against me, working toward coming right there in my arms on the dance floor. I felt all the love I had for her flow through me as I wrapped her in my arms, wound my long cool body around her and kissed her neck, sucking gently while I flexed my thigh muscle, pressing against her and then releasing slowly.

"I have missed you, lover," she said in my ear, panting she was so close to release. I helped by pressing my leg harder against her sensitive flesh.

"And I you, beloved," just as she shuddered against me, finding her pleasure in my arms once again.

SPOV

It had only been a week since the Festival of Tolerance, but I had missed Eric more than any words could have ever conveyed. The fact he wanted to replay the first time we had been together was just…so Eric…so perfect.

When I had gone backstage with Bill I had wished him into my place, memories and human form included. It had been him that Nan had carted away to the Authority and an illusion that Pam had staked Bill to save Nan's life. My Viking was a genius, and we were free to travel the world as we had wanted to do.

I missed my appearance, but as long as he didn't I guess it didn't matter too much. "Did you bring my suitcase?" I asked him as I came back from down my high on his thigh.

"In my room," he answered.

"Take me, there." A moment later he was taking me against the wall of his suite, pounding into me like he could fuck me hard enough to make up for the days we had been separated. And I had to give it to him, if anybody had a cock that could magically turn back time, I would look at his first. Suddenly, the dirty hard reenactment slipped away and I was left with my lover.

He carried me to the bed, still buried inside me and sat down with me across his lap. His hands came to my hips to hold me in place as he thrust up into me slowly murmuring words of Swedish love in my ear. I had had seven days and nights to myself waiting on him to get here. I had put them to good use.

"Knulla mig hårdare," I whispered in his ear and felt him shiver in my arms. "Djupare , älskare!" His hands clutched my hips hard enough to leave bruises as he worked to comply with my request. He was about two strokes away from bringing me to the mother of all orgasms when suddenly he started speaking Swedish himself.

"Gifta sig med mig . Bli min fru! Bond med mig , var min för evigt!" His voice, so torn between pleasure and need, touched me inside, and combined with what he was doing to my body it sent me over the edge pulling him with me a moment later. He fell back and rolled us over, his hips moving his still hard length slowly inside me.

"I didn't know you spoke, Swedish, lover, but I like it."

"You lost me at the end there, cowboy. What was that you said?" "I asked you to be my wife, forever, Sookie." We were married in Rio three nights later.

EPOV

The night after we married she opened her suitcase and pulled out the model rocket kit I gotten her when we first started this journey together. It was the only thing she had packed. We sat at the small table in our room for hours completing the assembly, arguing quietly over which piece went where and how it should look when we were done.

She wanted to use superglue on some parts instead of the standard glue explaining that the stress of launch could make it come apart. I let her do it in some places and held out that the standard glue would be all right for most parts and pieces. When she huffed and crossed arms at me I explained that even if we lost some of the parts along the way we could patch it up again.

I was still never quite sure when we were talking about the rocket or us.

This got her arms uncrossed and back to snuggling in my arms again. I missed Sookie sometimes, her blond hair and chocolate eyes but I knew she was there, and what she looked like didn't matter so much, it was how she felt when she was in my arms that reminded me why I loved her so much.

We set the rocket off the first time in Rio, laughing like children when we flew up beside it and plucked it from the air before it could fall back to earth. "Was it what you thought it would, Sookie? Pinning this rocket to your ass and reaching for orbit in my arms?"

"No," she said, her fingers running through my hair, making my scalp tingle. "It was so, so much better."

"For me, too," I told her as we touched down on the ground, already planning to blast off again, as soon as possible.

~The End~


End file.
